


Heartbeats like Clockwork

by erbor, Jaro (jar_o_mirth)



Category: Jack Et La Mécanique Du Coeur, The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - La Mécanique du Cœur, Alternate Universe - Steampunk, M/M, Prosthesis, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-06
Updated: 2016-01-05
Packaged: 2018-03-29 05:55:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 56,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3884914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erbor/pseuds/erbor, https://archiveofourown.org/users/jar_o_mirth/pseuds/Jaro
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bilbo Baggins is born with a weak heart, requiring a cuckoo-clock to keep it from stopping. All is well for the next fifty years, but when his mechanism begins to act up, he will have to embark on a journey to find the only person who can fix his heart: A dwarven clockmaker by the name of Thorin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Заводное сердце](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7798516) by [Allegros_aka_Corky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allegros_aka_Corky/pseuds/Allegros_aka_Corky), [fandomRetellingsCrossovers2016](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fandomRetellingsCrossovers2016/pseuds/fandomRetellingsCrossovers2016)



> written for the [Hobbit Story Big Bang Challenge (2015)](http://hobbitstory.livejournal.com).
> 
>  **Big Bang Artists:** [theindianwinter](http://theindianwinter.tumblr.com/post/118961052707/) • [shinigami714](http://shinigami714.tumblr.com/post/118895141951/) • [ineffablemess](http://ineffablemess.tumblr.com/post/118804272315/) • [teax](http://teaxdragon.tumblr.com/post/119033194822/)[dragon](http://teaxdragon.tumblr.com/post/119248647332/)
> 
>  **More perfect art:** [hilariously-infuriating](http://hilariously-infuriating.tumblr.com/post/119028539823/)
> 
> if you did something for my fic and I haven't seen it, please let me know!

It was September 22, the day after autumn began, and the sun was nowhere to be seen. A season had never been so adamant in letting it be known that it had arrived. Gone was the hotness of summer, blown away by the brisk winds of the equinox. In only a night, the green pastures of the Shire’s broad plains and rolling hillocks had dulled in colour, giving way to softer shades and even some yellows.

Autumn had arrived, stomping its proverbial feet and huffing cold mist down onto the Little Folk’s realm. Within the span of twenty-four hours, the children had gone from splashing about the Brandywine’s shores in their underclothes to wearing long dresses and jackets, and the adults had swapped having a smoke in the front garden for having a smoke in their smoking rooms.

No one could complain. The crops had yielded a bountiful harvest that year, so an early winter was the least of their concerns. Pantries and larders and cupboards had been restocked to their full capacity, and firewood had been collected, and new wool blankets had been made: Not a single hobbit would go cold or hungry if the need to stay indoors for long periods of time arose. The sudden cold was bothersome, yes, but not dangerous to such a well-prepared lot. Everything was well in the Shire, and would be until next spring.

Except, perhaps, for one particular family. In a large hobbit-hole built into the side of The Hill, with far too many smoking chimneys sticking out of it and thrumming pipes snaking along its grass walls, Belladonna Baggins had gone into premature labour. She was in pain and a bit scared, and she gripped her husband’s hand tight enough to make the bones creak, but she took deep breath after deep breath and said nothing. Bungo said quite a lot, his anxiousness finding an escape in spouting nonsense about how the midwife should be there by now and whatnot. He had sent for her the moment Belladonna had given a gasp of pain, but she still was nowhere to be seen.

Belladonna smiled through a spasm and squeezed Bungo’s hand even tighter. Neither of them made a noise of protest, though Bungo did continue to mutter about the midwife. Wittering on seemed to calm him, or at least keep him from going to pieces, so Belladonna let him. She rather liked hearing his voice, not to mention that he hadn’t tried to free his abused fingers yet: He deserved a reward for such gallantry.

For once, Bag End was quiet. Their sprawling workshop at the far end of the hallway, usually full of strange noises and sounds, had fallen silent at Bungo’s command: He had turned off all of their machines and trinkets, pulled the liquids away from the burners, and halted the difference engine mid-tabulation. Bungo had wanted to eliminate all possible annoyances for Belladonna, but Belladonna would have found comfort in the familiar whistling and whirring that could be heard at all hours coming out of their workshop. She had thanked him all the same.

They had been warned, naturally. More than one person had told them a pregnancy would be hard on both mother and child, seeing how a third of the mother’s body had been cut away and replaced with brass and steel. They hadn’t listened. Now Belladonna lay naked in their four-post bed, iron and pine wood, and her tanned skin was almost as white as the linen. Bungo cursed the midwife some more.

In the end, the woman arrived just in time to deliver the baby. The scent of freshly-baked mince pie clung to her, and it made Belladonna somewhat relax. After she gave birth, she would have an abundant meal. Bungo would do the cooking, of course. She would remain in their bedroom with their child bundled up in her arms.

Bungo stood up and ushered the midwife to Belladonna’s side, not even bothering with greetings of any kind. Extremely rude, that, but he could be forgiven, given the circumstances. He tried to stay next to Belladonna, but the midwife sent him away after his third ‘how much longer now?’

“This isn’t an exact science, Mr Baggins,” said she, “nor is it like clockwork.”

And she pushed him out into the hallway.

Things didn’t go any smoother after that, in spite of Bungo and his fretting’s removal. If anything, it became even harder for Belladonna. The pain seemed to increase by the second, piling itself up. Empires of agony raged war in the small of her back and from her waist down. She felt sick. She was going to combust, go up in flames, burst into heat and light.

But none of those things happened. Instead, she exhaled sharply and felt the pressure leave her body, slip out of her as if it were the easiest thing in the world. She sank back into the bedsheets, drained beyond words.

“A boy,” said the midwife. Just that. No words of congratulation for Belladonna Took and her poisoned child. She didn’t mind, laughter pushing past her lips and filling the room. She was a mother. Bungo was a father. Nothing else mattered at the moment.

There was a slap and she closed her eyes, waiting for the melody of her son’s cry. Seconds went by, the grandfather clock in the dining room ticking away. Belladonna opened her eyes and propped herself in her elbows, looking at the midwife. She could feel her damp hair sticking to the skin of her neck, and the air of the bedroom against her sweaty body was starting to make her feel cold, but the shiver that went through her had nothing to do with the room’s temperature.

Bungo slunk into the room, having sensed that something was wrong. “Bella?”

“What is it?” she asked the midwife.

“He’s weak. Far too weak. Alive, but…” The woman pressed an ear to the bundle of blankets in her arms. Belladonna didn’t even catch a glimpse of her son. “His heart isn’t strong enough. It’s giving out as we speak.”

Bungo stood by Belladonna’s side, his face ashen. “Can’t you do something?”

“I cannot heal this,” said the midwife, shaking her head. She walked up to Belladonna and offered the baby. “You might want to hold him now, while he still lives.”

“Oh, goodness,” Bungo sobbed. “Oh, goodness me.”

Her husband’s hand on her shoulder, Belladonna took her son in her arms and pulled the blankets away. He was a small thing, even by hobbit standards. Pale and thin, as if he had been wasting away inside his mother’s womb. A melting snowflake. Belladonna had never fallen so deep in love so quickly.

The midwife began to put her things away. She was untouched by the whole ordeal. Either she was used to seeing babies die within minutes of being born, or Belladonna had a worse reputation than she had believed. Something ugly reared its head within her. Not showing her or Bungo compassion was one thing, but denying a dying babe love? That was something only a monster would do.

“Why?”

She had meant to yell at the midwife, but that word came out instead, trembling and sotto voce. The other woman looked at her, her bag in her hand and her lips set into a thin line.

“There is no why. I told your husband and now I tell you: This isn’t like clockwork.” The words were delivered in a detached and professional manner, and Belladonna began to suspect that the midwife had indeed seen too many newborns die. Only that could explain her aloofness. “Enjoy what precious moments you have left. Send for me when it passes on.”

“He,” hissed Bungo.

“The less you think of it as a person, the easier it will be, Mr Baggins.”

“Get out,” he spat through the tears. “Get out of our home!”

The midwife curtsied and left. Bungo pressed a cheek against the top of Belladonna’s head. One large sun-kissed hand came up to stroke his son’s brow, but the fingers flinched back when they came in contact with the cold little body.

“Is he—”

“Not yet,” Belladonna murmured. “Not yet.”

“Goodness,” Bungo said again, rubbing at his wet face. “If we could just fix him up…”

“He isn’t one of our machines, Bungo,” she said. “We can’t— Clockwork.”

“Sorry?”

“Clockwork. The midwife. She said this wasn’t clockwork,” Belladonna said, looking up at her husband. Her eyes were ablaze. “But what if it were?”

“I’m not sure I’m following.”

“Oh, for the love of— Help me up.” Belladonna wrapped her son back up in his blankets and held him close to her breast with one arm, extending the other for Bungo to take. When he didn’t, she bristled. “Up, Bungo! Now!”

“Er, what are we doing?” he asked, assisting her to her feet.

Everything from Belladonna’s hips down ached and felt like marmalade. She was pretty sure she shouldn’t leave the bed for at least a day, after such an arduous birthing, but she didn’t care. Her knees wobbled and she leaned against Bungo.

“Saving our son,” she said, her voice holding that matter-of-fact tone that warned everyone within hearing distance not to contradict her. “Let’s go to the workshop.”

* * *

Bilbo grew up on stories of how his mother had carved a hole into his chest and attached a clock to his heart. Everyone talked about it, even fifty years later. Some regarded it as a cautionary tale, a proof of just how mad and wicked the Bagginses of Bag End were. Others thought it an epic legend of two daredevils foiling the evil midwife’s attempt to kill their child. The ones who knew them well saw it for what it was: desperation born out of an all-consuming love.

All of that, however, always mattered little to Bilbo. He had never been interested in the eccentricity-cum-exoticness of his clock-heart. In fact, he rather loathed it because people kept trying to touch it without his permission, even after five decades of being told not to do that, thank you. Had his heart been nothing special, he would have been left well alone and he wouldn’t have to worry, but that wasn’t the case.

Bilbo had grown weary of saying that his heart wasn’t meant to be touched when he was a young lad. Still, he kept on saying it, waiting for the day when his words would sink in. He had a health condition, after all. The residents of Hobbiton should pay more attention to his protests every time a hand tried to slip under his cravat and feel the small machinery embedded in his chest. His heart was a frail thing and he trusted no one with it.

Despite his ill appearance as a new-born, Bilbo had grown up to be a decent-looking hobbit. Summers upon summers running through prairies and farms under his mother’s watchful gaze had turned his pale skin a hale colour, and his father’s excellent cooking—combined with Bilbo’s excellent appetite—had made him look less like a scarecrow and more like the plump and soft creature he was meant to be.

Bilbo’s parents, both now departed, had been the only ones allowed to touch his heart. They had been the ones to fix it in the first place, so it only made sense. Bilbo knew that he had nothing to fear with them; for they would never do anything to harm his frail little blood-pump. If anyone had ever earned the right to hold his heart in their hands, it had been them.

Having a clock-heart was far from easy. There were rules to keep in mind and, if Bilbo was interested in living a long life, never bend nor break. Lucky for him, he didn’t have to memorise extensive list with lots of odd whimsical vocabulary. The rules were only three and quite straightforward. His own mother had written them down in a tiny piece of parchment that Bilbo now kept in his heart behind the little cuckoo bird. If one somehow managed to get a hold of the piece of parchment, it would read:

RUBRICS OF THE CLOCK-HEART

1\. DO NOT TOUCH THE HANDS.  
2\. DO NOT LOSE YOUR TEMPER.  
3\. DO NOT EVER FALL IN LOVE.

HEED THESE WORDS OR YOUR HEART SHALL BREAK ONCE MORE.

Bilbo had been taught these rules from a tender young age, and he could recite them even in his sleep. His parents had quizzed him on them as he became older, just to make sure that he remembered. Perhaps ironically, he knew them by heart.

That is how he grew up: Very aware of the three dangers that might end him, but also comfortable in the knowledge that his parents would be there to recalibrate his clock if it ever went out of kilter.

Hobbits didn’t have a tendency to snap or lose their marbles over things. All in all, they were a gentle people with mild temperaments, and they regarded strong bursts of emotion as something to be avoided. There were exceptions to the rule, as usual, but Bilbo had been raised not to be one since a proper-hobbit personality was what his condition required: Having a calm, sensitive, collected heart. A hobbit heart, like many Shire-dwellers would say.

The first thing any proper hobbit did after waking up was have breakfast. Once a week, on Sunday mornings, Bilbo shirked being proper in favour of ensuring his continued existence. The moment he opened his bleary eyes, one hand would reach up to retrieve a tiny gold key from his bedside table; said key would then be inserted into a vertical slot, and Bilbo would wind his heart.

Normal cuckoo clocks had weights instead of a key, but it would be beyond uncomfortable to have two pieces of wood hanging from his chest at all times (having a clock in his chest at all times was uncomfortable enough on its own; there was no need to make it even worse), so his parents had retrofitted the little clock so its mechanism could be wound using a key. For that, Bilbo was immensely grateful.

On the particular Sunday morning in which our story begins, Bilbo was having trouble finding his key. He had left it on the bedside table the night before, having fished it out of the small chest where he kept it for the rest of the week. He was sure of it. And even if he had indeed forgotten to leave it on the bedside table, it was obvious that at least he had remembered to take it out of the box.

So he had done something between those two steps—retrieve the key and put it on the bedside table—that had made him misplace one of his most significant possessions. Not to mention literally vital.

Bilbo wrung his hands and shuffled his big hobbit feet, eyes darting about one of the many drawing rooms in Bag End. The key wasn’t there either. It hadn’t been in his bedroom, nor in the pantries, nor in the kitchens, nor in three out of the five bathrooms, nor in four out of the eight living rooms, nor in his studio, nor in the foyer, nor in his father’s old walk-in wardrobe.

The ticking of Bilbo’s clock-heart, now a tad bit on the side of painful and erratic, echoed in the stillness of daybreak. It seemed to be berating Bilbo. He didn’t need the berating to know he had messed up: He had been looking for a while now and there was still no sign of the key. It would be right to say he was beginning to panic.

Bilbo wasn’t one to misplace things. He was a tidy fellow. Everything had its place in his home. Especially those artefacts that had to do with his clock-heart. Before passing away, his mother had stressed the importance of taking good care of it because she had known, bless her, that Bilbo wouldn’t let anyone have a look at it after she was gone.

So he had organised his tool kits and found a safe place for his key (having a copy made had proved futile since the design was too complex to duplicate). He had learnt to clean the inner components of his prosthesis, something his father had done for him and then his mother. He had done everything to understand the workings of his heart and look after it, and Belladonna Baggins had left Middle-earth in peace.

For seven years, he had done a great job. But now he had gone and lost the dratted key.

Bilbo nibbled his thumb, a dull ache beginning to bloom in his torso. If he didn’t find the key, he wouldn’t be able to wind his clock. If he didn’t wind his clock, he would die. Slowly? He didn’t know. The Rubrics of the Clock-heart didn’t say anything about that, and he had never asked his parents. He hoped he wouldn’t die slowly, in any case. Slow deaths were usually painful, if the stories he had read were anything to go by.

Wrestling himself away from that unpleasant train of thought, Bilbo concentrated on remembering what he had done the previous night before bedtime. He had had supper, and then done the dishes. Afterwards, he had sat by his favourite fireplace with a mug of coffee to finish the book he had been reading for the past month. He hadn’t had the key with him then, nor had he taken it out of its box yet. Or had he?

Someone rang the doorbell. Bilbo sighed, tempted to tell whoever it was to bugger off. He had more pressing matters to attend to, and he was running out of time. Another knock had him scowling as he tramped down the hallway. His visitor was impatient.

“Half a moment!” he called, closing doors and pulling mantles over chests and boxes as he went. He always took precautions, just in case. Other hobbits liked making off with his things, more often than not.

Bilbo opened the front door, a polite smile on his face, and blinked. He was staring at a waist with a strange tool belt looped around it. Bilbo craned his neck until he found a face: It was a bearded old Man he had never seen before. Or maybe he had. There was something about him that struck Bilbo as familiar.

“Er, hullo.”

“Hullo indeed.”

Bilbo shifted his weight and cleared his throat. “Can I help you?”

“I’m sure you could, if you wanted to and if I needed the assistance. But I’m not the one who needs helping, Bilbo Baggins,” said the old man. His eyes narrowed, and he leaned on the engraved silver staff he carried. “Though I do not think you remember me at all, if the way in which you greet me is anything to go by!”

“I’m afraid you’re right.” Bilbo gave him an apologetic smile. “Would you mind refreshing my memory? I’m aware that we know each other, but the details elude me.”

“I expected as much. You were still a youngling when I last saw you.”

“Oh,” Bilbo fidgeted, “you don’t say?”

“Hmm,” grunted the old man. “Now, let’s see… Perhaps you remember my fireworks.”

“Fireworks?” Bilbo parroted, and then he gawked. “Gandalf?”

“So you do remember me after all!”

“Why, yes! Yes, I do! It’d be difficult to forget such whiz-poppers, as well as the wizard who made them. Come in, please! I insist.” Bilbo stepped aside and motioned with his hand, grinning as Gandalf stepped inside and removed his hat, revealing a pair of retrofitted goggles. Bilbo was curious about them, but didn’t ask. “Beg your pardon, but I hadn’t recognised you.”

Gandalf waved off the apology, his eyes crinkling up into a smile. They relocated to the main living room, sitting down in the worn but comfortable armchairs. Morning light spilled into the room through the round windows. Bilbo rubbed at his chest as he eased himself onto his favourite seat, Gandalf tracking the motion.

It had been many long years since Bilbo had seen the wizard, without a doubt. He recalled it had been during one of the Old Took’s midsummer-eve parties. Both of his parents had been alive at that time, and his mother had stayed up until the crack of dawn with Bilbo sitting on her lap as she talked about the impressive locomotives of the east with Gandalf. They were good memories.

“So, Bilbo, my boy,” began the wizard, bringing him back to the present, “how have you been?”

“Oh, fine.” Bilbo nodded. He tugged at the fabric of his shirt: It had a habit of snagging on the angles of his cuckoo clock and it itched like mad. “Just fine, yes.”

Gandalf’s eyebrows arched. “Just fine?”

“Well, er, yes? That’s what I said.”

“I see.”

They lapsed into silence. Bag End was still around them, devoid of the rackets of tinkering and lilting laughter. The smial had been that way since Bilbo had inherited it.

Bilbo went to get his pipe and pouch of Longbottom Leaf, offering some to Gandalf. The wizard accepted readily enough, pulling out his own pipe from a fold in his robes, but his eyes had narrowed yet again as he did. He was starting to make Bilbo nervous. The hobbit licked his lips and blew a smoke ring. Wizards were infamous for their ability to cause discomfort, what with their mysteriousness and all, so Bilbo decided he wouldn’t worry too much about his guest’s scrutiny.

Gandalf may have been close friends with his parents, but that didn’t explain why he had dropped by. Perhaps he didn’t know they had passed away and was expecting to see them. In that case, Bilbo would have to explain what had happened to them, and he didn’t feel ready to have that conversation with anyone—ever. He had sent numerous letters informing of his father’s and then his mother’s death for that very same reason.

The gears in Bilbo’s clock-heart hiccupped, making a stab of pain shoot through his chest. He swallowed down a whimper, but his face must have shown some of his discomfort because Gandalf frowned.

“Are you quite all right, Bilbo?”

“Quite, yes,” he said, and then he blanched. “Oh. Dear me. Oh, dear me, the key.”

“The key?”

“Yes, yes! The key!” Bilbo shot out of his seat, dropping his pipe in his haste. “I lost my key and I ought to wind my heart—I really ought to—before noon. And I was looking for it just now, but then you knocked and I got a bit side-tracked, and I wasted precious time I could have been using to look for it on you! Sorry, I mean no offense. A guest is always a pleasure to have, but just… not right now!”

“Understandable,” said Gandalf all too calmly. “So what does your key look like?”

“Small. About the size of an index finger. A proper index finger.”

“Proper?”

“You know, hobbit-sized,” Bilbo gestured with his hand as if to say ‘but that is obvious and of no importance’. “It’s made of gold. Really intricate-looking.”

“With spirals and leaves carved into it?”

“Yes.” Bilbo looked at him. “How did you know?”

Gandalf pointed at the fireplace’s fender. There, glinting innocently in the morning light, was the key. Bilbo gave a strangled squeak and lunged for it. What a relief! He had honestly thought he would never find it in time, and then he would die. And what would he tell his dear mother when he saw her in the afterlife? What would he tell his father? That he had died because of his own stupidity and carelessness? He would die all over again out of shame first.

Bilbo excused himself for a moment and padded down the hallway to his room. Once there, he closed the door and popped open his waistcoat and shirt. Peeking out of his chest was his clock, made of gold so that his blood wouldn’t rust it. Bilbo caressed it, wary not to touch the hands, and then wound it. The effect was immediate: He felt invigorated and younger than his age.

With a contented sigh, Bilbo buttoned his clothes back up, put the key in its box, and returned to the living room. Gandalf was sitting exactly where he had left him, but the hobbit didn’t doubt for a second that the wizard had snooped around. Such was the way of the Istari.

Gandalf raised an eyebrow. “All right?”

“All right,” Bilbo confirmed, sitting back down and accepting his pipe when Gandalf offered it. He noticed that there were no traces of ash on the carpet and gave the wizard a grateful smile. “My thanks.”

“It was nothing. But I must say it surprises me to find out that Bilbo Baggins had lost track of his clock-heart’s key. You are not an untidy creature, Bilbo, and it worries me that you would forget where you put an object of such importance.”

“Well, pardon me, but I guess we all just have our days,” Bilbo huffed.

“That much is true,” Gandalf conceded. He puffed on his pipe. “But is there anything on your mind that would make your thoughts... wander so dangerously?”

“My mind is fine and so are my thoughts, thank you!”

“I ask because I worry, Bilbo Baggins,” said Gandalf, his voice stern. “And I worry because I care. Do not be so quick to get in a strop with me.”

Bilbo felt tempted to remain in the company of his sudden and righteous anger, but he knew Gandalf was well-intentioned and didn’t deserve to be treated like that. Besides, his clock-heart’s mechanism whirred at his outburst and he grimaced. Rule number two.

Gandalf leant forward with his brow furrowed. “Are you sure you are all right, Bilbo?”

“Yes. No. I’m—” The hobbit groaned. It was obvious that the wizard knew something wasn’t the way it should be, so why pretend otherwise? He massaged his temple. “I might have a bit of a thing going on. Just a bit, though.”

“Well, what is it? Rest assured that if I can help, I will.”

“I’m not sure there’s anything to worry about, actually. I just— I’ve been having some, er, aches. Chest pains and the like. Very fleeting, very insubstantial. But they’re there, and I can’t help but worry a little.”

Gandalf nibbled his pipe for a moment. Then he said, “You think it’s your clock.”

“Yes. Maybe. I certainly hope it isn’t, but the gears have been locking up lately. Not a lot, but enough to make me take notice. My clock’s always run smoothly, but it’s been years since I last had it checked by an expert and, well, I’m afraid some things are bound to have slipped past me.”

“Would you like me to have a look?”

“No.” Bilbo raised a hand to his heart, glaring at Gandalf. The wizard regarded him flatly and it wasn’t long before Bilbo felt a rush of embarrassment take a hold of him. He lowered his hand. “Sorry, Gandalf. It’s just that no one but my parents has ever touched my heart.”

“A wise choice,” said Gandalf. “But it is high time you let someone else do it.”

“I don’t know about that,” Bilbo said around his pipe, blowing smoke like a sullen dragon and twitching his nose like a skittish rabbit. “It sounds nasty. Uncomfortable, even.”

The hands of his heart seemed to agree, his seconds freezing for a moment and sending a jolt of ice-cold pain through his ribcage. Bilbo cleared his throat to drown his squeal of discomfort, rubbing a hand over his chest as surreptitiously as he could manage.

“You may be surprised to learn,” said Gandalf, “that the contrary is true.”

“Can you promise the contrary will be true?”

“No.” Gandalf shook his head. “You’re the only one who can ensure that—though only to a certain extent, I’ll admit.”

Bilbo scowled. “That’s not very reassuring.”

“It wasn’t meant to be.”

“Huh,” Bilbo huffed. “Well, I’m much obliged.”

Gandalf chuckled, and they did nothing but blow smoke rings for a while. It was relaxing and amusing, and Bilbo lost track of time without meaning to. His cuckoo clock reminded him just how late in the morning it was soon enough, however, and he blinked with a start. He had missed breakfast and was well on his was to missing second breakfast as well if he didn’t get up and go about preparing it.

Bilbo tapped his pipe against the ashtray and stood up. He asked Gandalf if he wanted anything in particular to eat—he assumed the wizard would like to join him at the table—and then marched down the hallway and into one of the pantries. In this one was where he kept most of his baked goods, and he pulled out the treacle tart and raisin scones. He set them on the adjacent dining room’s table and then made some orange juice.

All the while, his clock-heart ticked away, almost in perfect sync with his heart. Almost. Bilbo knew how it felt to have his clock and heart working in perfect tandem, and this was not it. He rubbed at his chest absentmindedly as he went about setting the table, serving a slice of pie for him and Gandalf and adding a spoonful of clotted cream.

The wizard joined him the exact second he had finished preparing their meal, asking for a glass of red wine, and Bilbo rolled his eyes in good nature. If there was something Gandalf loved, it was the strong Shire-wine of the Southfarthing.

“It’s not even noon,” Bilbo pointed out.

“My dear Bilbo,” said Gandalf, “it’s never a bad time to enjoy a good wine.”

The hobbit went to the cellar and came back with a bottle of Old Winyards, setting it in front of Gandalf. “Just don’t finish it,” he warned.

Like in all hobbit meals, there was little talking at first.  Bilbo would have chattered as they ate, but Gandalf was ensnared by the many flavours that even the simplest of hobbit cuisine had to offer. The wizard hunched over and raised forkful after forkful of the tart to his mouth, leaving a little cream clinging to his beard in the process. Bilbo sniggered behind his handkerchief but said nothing, not wanting to distract his guest from his food.

It was always a delight, seeing people appreciate one’s cooking, and Bilbo didn’t see much of that. His visitors were scarce, and most of them didn’t care much for his pastries. They were more interested in his silver spoons and his gold clock and his late grandfather’s diamond cufflinks.

“So what do you plan to do?” asked Gandalf, jarring Bilbo out of his reverie.

“Sorry?”

“What do you plan to do?” repeated the wizard, pointing at Bilbo’s chest. “With your heart. It needs the care of a clockmaker, and not just any clockmaker.”

“Yes, I am aware.” Bilbo sighed, nibbling on a raisin scone. “But you know as well as I do that there aren’t many people who work with prosthetic mechanisms like mine. Come to think of it, I haven’t heard of one besides my parents for well over a decade and a half.”

“There aren’t any clockmakers like that near the Shire, no,” conceded Gandalf. “But there does exist a clockmaker who could fix your heart. I happen to know him.”

“Really, now? And would you trust him with my heart?”

“Yes. Thorin may be a bit rough around the edges, but he has kindness inside.”

“Thorin?”

“That’s his name.” Gandalf nodded, pouring himself another glass of Old Winyards. “He’s a dwarf and a master clockmaker. He’s got his shop, Erebor, all set up in the Lonely Mountain. Family business. He inherited the place about half a century ago.”

“Never heard of it.”

“No? You haven’t heard of Erebor?”

“No, sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about. I simply thought your mother might have told about it.”

Bilbo shook his head. “She never mentioned it, and neither did my father.”

“Well, they should have. Those of the Line of Durin might as well be the only ones capable of handling your heart without breaking it.” Gandalf straightened, his eyes glinting with a devious kind of mirth. “But I suppose the pleasure will be all mine! Drink your orange juice and hear me out, then. Allow me to tell you about the best clockmaker’s shop in all of Middle-earth.”


	2. Chapter 2

In Bungo and Belladonna’s workshop, there was a thick brown book bound in leather. It was decorated with swirling patterns of steel and its pages were yellowed with age. The Bagginses had compiled it, copying and attaching maps upon maps of the world until the book could hold no more information.

They had called it the Brown Worldmapping Book, twelve years after having put it together, at Bilbo’s insistence. Belladonna had liked to sit outside with it, tracing paths and routes with her index finger as she whispered to Bilbo about kingdoms and cities; Bungo had liked to sit next to them and smoke his pipe as they got lost in faraway lands.

Bilbo hadn’t been to the workshop in seven years. From the moment his father had died, Bilbo had frequented the room less and less until he finally decided to keep it sealed off after his mother’s death. He had no use for it and the trinkets in it, after all. Unlike his parents, Bilbo didn’t have a dormant wish to invent things, or mix two chemicals and see what happened, or write letters to mechanics and engineers across the world.

No, Bilbo was just fine right where he was. He was happy with his humdrum lifestyle, safe and cosy. His routine was calm and unchanging, and it was exactly what his delicate clock-heart needed. Doing anything strenuous or different would be bad for his health.

Gandalf disagreed. The wizard was of the opinion that Bilbo had to venture east. He had talked at length about legendary dwarves and legendary workshops and legendary stuff over second breakfast, but Bilbo hadn’t listened much. It had all sounded like a big pile of madness, and Bilbo didn’t pay attention to nonsense. He did, however, promise to look over his parents’ maps before the wizard made his excuses and left, which was why he was now standing in front of the workshop’s round iron door.

Bilbo ran a hand over its cold surface, and then he opened it. Sunlight trickled in through the round windows, and the dust motes of almost a decade danced in the beams of light. Bilbo blinked, his eyes watering at the accumulated dust, and he stepped inside. His mind was on the thick brown book he remembered so well.

For some reason, Bilbo had expected to have trouble finding it, but it didn’t take long at all. It was where his mother had left it that last time she went into the workshop: Resting atop the worktable nearest to the windows. He picked the Brown Book up and walked out, careful not to touch anything and with his eyes fixed ahead. The door shut with a soft click behind him and Bilbo let out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding.

He blew the dust off the book as he walked down the hallway, balancing it on his lap after he had sat at the desk in his study. The Brown Book creaked when Bilbo opened it at the middle, right where the maps of the eastern lands were. One in particular showed the Lonely Mountain and Dale, as well the lake separating them from Esgaroth.

Bilbo traced with a finger the jagged line of ink that depicted the Lonely Mountain. Gandalf had said that the dwarven clockmaker’s workshop was hiding in there somewhere, and Bilbo was supposed to find it if he wanted his heart fixed. Of course he didn’t need anything fixed, but rather looked over and recalibrated. His heart was quite in one piece since no one had had the chance to break it.

“All right, let’s see,” Bilbo murmured. “From here to Bree to… Rivendell? And then through the—” He turned the page and squinted at the map’s curvy script, “—High Pass? And then through Mirkwood. Or would it be better to go north and skirt the forest altogether?”

Bilbo had never wandered far from Hobbiton—his condition had impeded it—so he didn’t know how to prepare for such a long travel. His mother, however, had gone on many journeys before settling down. Her writings on the subject had to be in the Brown Book: Bilbo remembered her adding her memoirs at the very end.

Unlike the standard Shire calligraphy, Belladonna Took’s handwriting was angular and hasty. It reflected her restless soul, always ready to drop the pen or wrap up whatever she was writing if something more exciting came up. Bilbo smiled as he skimmed over her many letters, some sent to her Old Took, the majority sent to her husband (back then just a dear friend). She rambled on about anything and everything in most of them, and the parchments practically oozed her happiness.

Bilbo’s smiled faded as he realised that his mother didn’t talk about how she had travelled, but about what had happened during those travels. How inconvenient and impractical, Bilbo fumed, to have travelled but not have written at least an offhanded word of advice to any future aspiring travellers that might stumble upon her letters. And how foolish of him, to have never queried her on the matter—but he had never even considered the possibility that someday the very thing keeping him indoors would force him outdoors!

Because he would go outdoors, no matter how much he wished he didn’t have to. He didn’t want to die so soon, and if his clock kept acting up, he had no doubt what fate awaited him: A broken heart, and then the eternal sleep. If he had been any less fond of life, he might have considered just lying down and letting it happen. But he wasn’t, so a change of scenery was in place, no matter how unwanted.

There was a loud knock at the door. Bilbo jumped, almost dropping the weighty book onto his feet. The gold cuckoo bird nested in his chest pushed out of its confines to sing its song even though it was thirteen past twelve and it had no reason to sing. Infuriating startles and their propensity to make his clock act up. Bilbo pushed the bird back inside with a grumble, put the book down on the desk, and went to answer.

“Bilbo,” reproached Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, because reproaching was the only thing she ever did. She looked at him like he was a wilted lettuce. “Skipping lunch, aren’t we?”

“Postponing it, if you really must know.” Bilbo aimed for a courteous smile. “I’m a bit busy at the moment, Lobelia. Can I help you with anything or—”

“Help me! I’m not the one who needs helping!” Lobelia exclaimed, and Bilbo was surprised that she had said the exact same words as a wizard. “Who was that Man you let in this morning, Bilbo? What did he want?”

“Why do you care?”

“He could be dangerous! And you let him into your smial with such ease!”

“I let him into my smial because I know him.”

“You know him!” This seemed to be worse than saying Gandalf had threatened Bilbo in order to be allowed inside. Lobelia jerked her head back as if she had been slapped, the decorative gears in her little top hat jangling. “Whatever business do you have, knowing people like that?”

“Like what?”

“Don’t be obtuse, Bilbo. You know what I mean!”

“I’m sure I don’t.”

“Yes, you do. He’s an Outsider—quite obviously, might I add.”

“So he’s an Outsider.” Bilbo raised an eyebrow because he knew it bothered Lobelia whenever he did it. “That doesn’t make him bad or dangerous.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Oh, but I do, as a matter of fact,” he said, his lips splitting into a wide grin. “I know him and who he is, after all, whereas you have only spied on him whilst he visited an old acquaintance of his.”

Lobelia coloured. “I’m just worried for you, Bilbo, you understand. We all are,” she said, her tone crisp. “Shutting yourself away for so long. Growing distant. Growing odd.”

“I’ve never been the norm, if you’ll recall.”

“But you’d never been called Mad Baggins until your poor dear mother—” Lobelia stopped, her brain catching up with her words before she could finish the sentence. She harrumphed and said, “Well, er, I mean… You were always peculiar, yes, but now it’s getting a bit out of control, wouldn’t you say?”

“I wouldn’t.”

Her jaw dropped. “Bilbo Baggins!”

“Yes, that’s me. Hullo. I really wasn’t lying when I said I was busy, Lobelia. Your concern for my well-being is duly noted and deeply appreciated, although a bit misplaced since there is nothing for you to worry about at present.” But there might be in a week or so, he added in the privacy of his mind, when I run off to places unknown to any living hobbits. “And I was planning on having my latish lunch about now. Surely you know better than to keep an ailing person from their food?”

Lobelia harrumphed again. “Yes. I have to go to the market anyway. Good day, cousin.”

“Good day,” said Bilbo, waiting until Lobelia had walked down the path and closed the garden gate to shut the door. To the foyer at large, he muttered, “And good riddance.”

He peeked out the window to check the state of his front garden. Lobelia had been suspiciously civil in her enquiries and quick to go. Bilbo feared she had nipped his blossoms before knocking; it wouldn’t be the first time she did something so vile. The flowers looked fine, however. Small miracle. With his worries laid to rest, Bilbo had a quick lunch before heading back to the studio. He had maps to study and a travel to plan, and he wasn’t one to delay the inevitable.

Besides, he might end up enjoying it. And who knew? Perhaps the world would teach his crippled heart a thing or two. Or perhaps it would make his heart overexert itself, and its clock face would explode out of his chest, and its hands would pierce his ribcage, and he would die in an instant. Who knew, right?

Right.

Around nightfall, Gandalf returned. Bilbo hadn't expected him to, so the wizard's reappearance took him by surprise. Gandalf laughed and patted him on the head, taking off his hat once more and making his way to the same drawing room they had sat in that morning. Bilbo trailed after him, a bit disgruntled by being treated like a child. They sat down and lit their pipes.

“I didn't think you'd come back,” said Bilbo.

“Really? And what made you think that?”

“I figured being visited by a wizard once is unusual enough,” the hobbit explained. “No one would have guessed you would visit twice—and on the same day!”

Gandalf clicked his tongue. “Oh, bosh.”

“Perhaps. But you have to admit that you wizards are a slippery lot. Very hard to find and keep in the same place for long,” said Bilbo, blowing a smoke ring. “Anyhow, will you be staying for dinner?”

“If you insist,” replied Gandalf, making him chuckle. “And perhaps you’d be willing to let me try one of your guest rooms for the night? I’m afraid no inn would take me.”

“Not even All-Welcome?”

“Especially All-Welcome.”

“Oh. I’d thought— Hm. Hmmm.” Bilbo chewed on the end of his pipe for a moment, brow furrowed. “That’s a rather misleading name, then, don’t you think?”

“Extremely so.” Gandalf let a coil of smoke hiss out of his parted lips, a triangular head shaping itself at the beginning. Soon a grey snake began to slither along the ceiling. “But I’m not here to talk about dinner or lodgings, no matter how ensnaring those topics can get. I’m here to talk about your upcoming journey.”

Bilbo pulled a face. “Must we?”

“We must,” Gandalf said. “Tell me, Bilbo: Do you know how to reach Erebor in a sensible amount of time having faced little to no perils?”

“I have books on the subject,” sniffed Bilbo. “Lots of them.”

“That’s good for camping, but not for answering my question,” said the wizard. “Nor for traipsing across Middle-earth.”

“I can take care of myself,” Bilbo lied.

Gandalf gave him a look that said it all. Then the wizard cleared his throat and tapped his pipe in the hearth before slipping it into one of his tool belt’s many pouches and pockets.

“You will need travel companions, of course. I would suggest the merchant caravan leaving for Esgaroth from Bree in about a month, but we cannot wait that long.”

“So what do you suggest?” Bilbo asked, his tone letting it be clear that Gandalf’s help was accepted with great reluctance. He took a long puff of his pipe. “It’s not like a group of travellers will come knocking at my door and ask if I’d like to join them.”

“Mm.”

Bilbo looked at Gandalf. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“You said ‘mm’. That’s something.”

“My dear Bilbo,” Gandalf’s eyes twinkled, “that’s not even a word.”

Bilbo pressed his lips into a thin line. “I don’t trust you.”

“You know you do.”

“I’m starting to think it rather silly of me.”

The doorbell rang. Bilbo looked at the hallway, then at Gandalf, then back at the hallway. He made no move to get up and answer the door. The wizard arched his bushy eyebrows so high up that they got lost under his goggles. He looked almost innocent, but missed the mark by a mile or two.

“Are you going to get that?”

“Should I?”

“It’s entirely up to you,” said Gandalf, making it sound like Bilbo had no choice. “It’s always been entirely up to you.”

Bilbo glowered, the thinnest and longest hand of his clock-heart stabbing him for his rudeness with each second that passed. He yielded to his mechanism’s wishes and stood up with a heaving sigh. Gandalf looked triumphant past the oozing self-satisfaction.

“I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?” asked Bilbo.

Gandalf smiled pleasantly. “Only if you give yourself any reasons to do so.”

Bilbo went to the foyer and unlocked the door, opening it to reveal a dwarf. He was blonde and looked young despite his being taller than Bilbo. He was dressed in a combination of fabric and metal, and sported more leather and fur than the average dwarf. Not missing a beat, the blonde dwarf bowed and introduced himself as Fíli. Bilbo didn’t bow, both because it wasn’t a hobbit custom and he was a bit shell-shocked to see a dwarf in the Shire, but he did introduce himself. He thought it prudent not to comment on the oddness of Fíli’s name or his garments.

The dwarf pushed inside as if he had a right to step into Bilbo’s home, looking around with curious eyes. He hung his cloak on a peg on the wall and tossed an alarming amount of blades on top of Bilbo’s mother’s glory box. The hobbit squeaked and picked them back up. He didn’t know where swords and sabres were supposed to go, so he put them in the umbrella stand.

“Careful with those.” the dwarf—Fíli—said, taking in the house. “You have a nice place. Who built it?”

“My father.”

“Really? I didn’t know hobbits could do stuff.”

“Wh— But of course we can!” exclaimed Bilbo, not bothering to hide his indignation. He knew his folk had a bit a reputation as stupid and spineless, but dwarves of all peoples should know better than believe in those things. “Everyone in Middle-earth can, as you put it, ‘do stuff’. What made you think we don’t?”

“You lot don’t look like much.” Fíli shrugged, then grinned and began stomping down the hall, peering into each room he came across as if he were looking for something.  Bilbo hurried after him. “But I guess I was wrong, eh? Since you’re joining us and all. If the Captain says yes, I mean.”

“The Captain? What captain?”

“Mum,” said Fíli. “Ah, Gandalf, there you are!”

“Good evening, Fíli.”

“I thought you might have already left.”

“No, no. I’m here. Where’s the Captain? I thought she would come.”

“Yes, she’s—”

“Sorry, but… Gandalf?” interrupted Bilbo. “Maybe you could, er, explain this?” He gestured at the young dwarf who had made himself comfortable in Bilbo’s armchair.

“I think Fíli can explain it better than me. Fíli?”

“Aye.” The dwarf straightened. “I’m here on behalf of Mum.”

“Oh.” Bilbo waited for Fíli to say something more, but when he didn’t, he asked, “What for? I don’t think I know your mother.”

“Of course not. But I’m supposed to make sure you’re safe. You know, a non-threat. Even if you’re a hobbit, and even if Gandalf put in a word for you, we have to check. We can’t be having a tosser on board.”

Bilbo glanced at Gandalf. “On board?”

“On the Ered Luin, I mean.” Fíli looked at the wizard. “Doesn’t he know?”

“Yes, but very little. Bilbo,” said Gandalf, turning his attention to the hobbit, “I found a lovely group of dwarves with whom you could travel. They have an airship, and so you’d be arriving at Dale in about three weeks if the weather is good.”

Bilbo had suspected that Gandalf had returned because he had come up with some mad plan or other, but the hobbit would have never guessed it involved dirigibles and Aulë’s children. It was so farfetched that Bilbo stared at the wizard for one long minute looking for any sign that what he had said was a joke.

No sign made itself present, and so Bilbo cleared his throat the same way his father had whenever his mother had said something unhobbitier than usual. He pulled at his cravat, which felt tighter around his throat than the previous instant. The clock-heart tick-a-tick-a-ticked away in his chest, its opinion on the matter clear.

“You’re serious. I mean, you’re mad. I mean, I didn’t— Er, beg your pardon, Master Dwarf, but I didn’t know,” Bilbo told Fíli. “Gandalf here didn’t tell me anything.”

Fíli grinned. “He does that.”

“There’s no need for me to put everything into words,” said the wizard, “or my words might lose their strength and go unheard. I cannot risk that.”

“I guess not.” Bilbo pinched the bridge of his nose. “But really, Gandalf, what were you thinking? Me? On an airship? With dwarves? My heart will give out before lift-off.”

“Don’t worry, Mister Boggins. We’ll stay out of your beard,” said Fíli, and then remembered Bilbo’s distinct lack of facial hair of any kind. His eyes fell on the mop of curls on top of the hobbit’s head. “Er, hair.”

“Yes, all right,” Bilbo muttered, not because everything was actually all right, but because his brain was a clutter of I-will-nots and leave-right-nows, and he couldn’t possibly say any of those things aloud. Not if he didn’t want to anger a wizard and his young friend. “I’m Baggins, Master Fíli, not Boggins. And I should like to have dinner now, quietly, and then retire to bed for the night. Will you be joining us?”

“No, thanks,” said the dwarf. “I have to go back soon.”

“May Bilbo join your crew, then?” asked Gandalf.

“I don’t think Mum will have anything against it, so yes, if he wishes.” Fíli nodded, his clear eyes raking over Bilbo. “We leave tomorrow at noon, Mister Baggins. You should be there an hour before.”

Bilbo started. “But I have nothing prepared!”

“Then you better get preparing, aye?” Fíli slapped his knees and got to his feet. “Bring only the essentials. One backpack should be more than enough. I’m sure Gandalf can help you; he’s travelled with us before.”

After that, Bilbo accompanied Fíli to the front door and they said goodbye. Bilbo watched the dwarf strut down Bagshot Row and get lost in the velvet night. His clock tick-tocked against his heart. It was painful, but not the kind of painful that caused him dread. Before he could dwell too much on it, he went back inside and got lost in making dinner for him and Gandalf.

The truth of the matter was that he would like to organise his little trip a little better. Joining an airship crew—and one made up of dwarves, no less!—sounded like something his mechanism wouldn’t survive. And what would happen when his clock finally gave out? Bilbo would be no more, and that was exactly what he was trying to avoid.

The merchant caravan Gandalf had mentioned was the best option. It would be slow, yes, and riskier than journeying by dirigible, but he had the feeling that having Men and hobbits for travel companions would be better than being in the midst of dwarves. They were a very close-knit and private race, after all, and Bilbo had no wish to feel left out and unwelcome. His clock-heart acted up whenever he experienced negative emotions for long periods of time. The months after both of his parents’ funerals had taught him as much.

“You understand I can’t travel with them,” he said over dessert.

“As you say, Bilbo,” replied Gandalf. “As you say.”

*** * ***

Bilbo retired to his room after dinner, turning down Gandalf’s invitation to smoke outside for a while. It had been a long and trying day, and Bilbo was tired. An irritating voice in his head, buzzing like a fly, told Bilbo that he was going to bed early because he wanted to be well-rested in case he woke up wanting to join the Ered Luin’s crew. Bilbo ignored that voice, knowing from experience that listening to it only caused him more pain than gain.

He was just tired. Simple as that. Couldn’t a hobbit be tired, after a day full of wizards and dwarves, and talks of master clockmakers and airships and many other uncomfortable things? Bilbo thought he was entitled to be very tired indeed. So he undressed and slipped on his nightgown with sluggish movements, tugging on the lush fabric when it snagged on his cuckoo clock.

The bed dipped under Bilbo’s weight, and he buried his face in the pillow with a sigh. His body felt heavy with an exhaustion that went beyond the physical realm. In the darkness of his bedroom echoed the ticking of his heart, but it was such a familiar sound that it didn’t bother Bilbo; as a matter of fact, it ended up dragging him under, one click at a time.

When he woke up, it was to Gandalf’s humming somewhere in the smial. Bilbo got up, washed up and got dressed, and went looking for his marauding guest. He found Gandalf sitting at one of the smaller dining rooms’ table, tucking into some carrot cake with coffee. For once, his goggles and tool belt were set aside for the meal, as one—one with manners and a minimum knowledge of social etiquette, at least—was wont to do.

There was enough food for two, so Bilbo sat down at the table as well.

“Good morning.”

“What do you mean?” asked the wizard.

Bilbo poured himself a cup of coffee. “I mean good morning.”

Gandalf grunted and turned back to his meal. They ate in silence; the clinking of cups against saucers and chewing were the only sounds in the pale morning light. Bilbo wiped his mouth with a napkin and looked out the nearest window. The sun had been out for a short while, which meant he had overslept only a little. He had plenty of time to go about his morning routine without rushing. Do the washing-up, have a smoke, read some.

Maybe he would go down to the market after second breakfast, to act as a respectable bachelor and disprove the ‘Mad Baggins’ rumours going around. He didn’t pay much attention to anything that came out of Lobelia’s mouth, but it was true that he had let his manners slip after he had become his own master. Not that his mother had ever encouraged him to behave, except when it came to the Rubrics.

“It’s nine already,” Gandalf said.

Bilbo hummed in agreement and went back to his food, brushing an absent-minded hand over his clock-heart. He didn’t need to be told the time; he never had. The gold cuckoo bird had always trilled its little song every sixty minutes. And anyway, Bilbo had always had the curious ability to know the exact time without even peeking down at his clock.

“Yes, it is,” he replied.

“The Ered Luin will be departing in three hours.”

Bilbo stopped eating and pinned the wizard with unimpressed eyes. “You, know, Gandalf, you’re not as subtle as you think you are. It’s a wonder how your kind manages to convince others to do things they don’t want to do.”

“We don’t have to convince anyone to do anything. All we do is give people a little nudge.” Gandalf licked his fingers clean of the carrot cake’s icing and started picking crumbs out of his beard. “We don’t need to do more, in any case. Destiny and Fate tend to unravel themselves all on their own.”

“Right. Well, I don’t think there will be any unravelling—” Bilbo crossed his arms and leant back against the backrest, giving off a strong vibe of immovability, “—since you won’t be nudging me anywhere.”

“Does this mean I cannot convince you to get me another cake from your pantry?”

Bilbo chuckled. “How about some gooseberry scones?”

“Sounds lovely.”

“I’ll be back in flash, then,” Bilbo said.

As he walked down the hallway, intent on getting the scones from their designated pantry, he noticed some things. Little details. Most hobbits wouldn’t have noticed them, or would have blamed them on one of the relatives they lived with. But Bilbo lived alone, and he remembered very well where everything was meant to be. All of his belongings had their place.

He slowed down, frowned, stopped, and backtracked. The door into his father’s walk-in wardrobe was ajar. It hadn’t been ajar the night before. He was certain of it. Peering into the room revealed the mysterious disappearance of some of Bungo Baggins’s more comfortable and less respectful attires. Bilbo stared at nothing for a moment, and then he squared his shoulders. Right. Time to give a certain meddlesome wizard a piece of his mind.

Bilbo marched out of the room, shutting the door with a firm clack. He went back to the dining room empty-handed: There would be no gooseberry scones for Gandalf. Bilbo crossed his arms.

“You’ve been snooping.”

Gandalf arched his eyebrows. “Wizards don’t snoop, my dear boy.”

“Oh, please!” huffed Bilbo. “Yes, you do! Stop trying to— Don’t pretend to be so… so sanctimonious when you obviously aren’t. You remind me of Lobelia.”

“Why, Bilbo,” said Gandalf, his eyebrows arching even more, “I’m offended.”

“As you should be. Let this be a lesson to you.”

“To think I’d live to see the day when Bilbo Baggins likened me to one of his most horrid relatives,” muttered the wizard. He pulled out his pipe and lit it, his appetite seemingly lost. “Belladonna would keel over if she could hear you.”

“But she can’t,” said Bilbo, and his clock locked up and its gears rattled for a split second. He winced and rolled his shoulders to dispel the pain. “Anyway, what did you do with Dad’s clothes, hm? Where did you put them? Did you stuff them in your hat, perhaps?”

“Don’t be silly. My hat’s full of things as it is. There’s no more room.”

“Then where? I doubt you’re wearing them under those rags. Yes, Gandalf, rags. Your robes stopped being presentable a long time ago.” Bilbo rolled his eyes at the wizard’s upset look. “Back to the point, Dad’s clothes are far too small for you, so I doubt you put them on.”

“I did not,” Gandalf confirmed, puffing clear-grey smoke. “They’re by the front door.”

“And why on Middle-earth would you put them there?”

Bilbo stomped down the length of his home, fuming and muttering unflattering things under his breath. Sometimes, far too often, Bag End was impractically huge. He should pack up and move to one of the smaller smials, let one of his cousins with numerous children have the place. But he didn’t see that happening.

When he reached the foyer, he found his mother’s favourite rucksack leaning against the round door. He blinked, taking a startled step back. For an instant, he was eight and giggling as his mother tickled his sides before leaving to attend some engineering conference or other in Bree. Bilbo ripped himself out of the memory, clock tocking against his heart, and crouched down.

The contents were nothing special. A worn sleeping mat had been rolled at the very top, so he removed it and started rummaging through the rucksack, first with suspicion and then curiosity. Fíli had said that Gandalf would know what to pack, but some of the objects were odd choices to have made. Heat tabs, for example. He wasn’t getting anywhere near an engine, so why add that? The salt tablets gave him pause as well. What did he need athletic supplements for?

Most things made sense, however. A sewing kit, a lighter (and matches; never trust a lighter), small packages wrapped in soft green leaves which looked like rations, a pocket knife, a first-aid kit, some kitchen paraphernalia, lamp oil, a few candles. And yes, his father’s clothes, folded and placed into the rucksack in a neat pile.

Someone cleared their throat. Bilbo looked over his shoulder.

“What’s this?”

“You’ll need it, my boy,” said Gandalf, not answering his question at all.

“No, I won’t need it because we agreed that I wasn’t going to join the Ered Luin’s crew.”

“We didn’t agree on such a thing.”

“Yes, we did. We talked it over last night during dessert.”

“I don’t hold important conversations during dinner, much less if the food is hobbit-made,” said Gandalf. “It requires my whole concentration.”

“And I require that you stop… interfering with my life! I’m fine here, I’ve always been, and now you want me to go galloping off just because my heart needs recalibrating! Mum taught me how to recalibrate it; I can do it!”

“You said some things were bound to have slipped past you.”

Bilbo bristled at having his words echoed back to him. “But that doesn’t mean there is an issue. I feel fine. I am fine.”

“You have flinched and clutched your chest far too many times during my stay to feel or be fine, Bilbo Baggins,” Gandalf’s figure grew large, imposing, casting thick shadows as he loomed, his face turning dark and fearsome. His voice boomed like cannons. “If I say you need this journey, it’s because you do! I will not let you cut your days short out of mindless self-indulgence. You wish to live to see your hair whiten; I know you do. Don’t you?”

“I, er— Well, yes, of course— I mean, who wouldn’t—”

“Then you will grab that bag, run to the Brandywine Bridge’s mooring mast, and board that airship!”

“But—”

“No time for any of that!” Gandalf thrust the rucksack into Bilbo’s arms. “Go! And don’t forget this.” He produced the little box where Bilbo kept his key out of thin air and thrust it into one of the rucksack’s pockets.

For some reason, Bilbo obeyed. He slung on the bag and said, “Yes. Right. Could you, er— Hm. Please tell Holman to look after my garden.”

“Will do. Now go!”

Bilbo yanked the door open and ran. He dashed down the stone steps, hopped over his little gate, and shot down Bagshot Row with his rucksack bouncing on his back. Gandalf’s merry laugh followed him all the way down the hill, and just as Bilbo leapt over a neighbour’s garden fence to take a shortcut, the wizard shouted:

“Go get that gold heart of yours fixed, my boy!”

That turned a few heads. Bilbo ran on, not even bothering with glaring over his shoulder. It wasn’t that his clock was a secret, because it most certainly wasn’t, but he would have liked to keep his travel under wraps. Still, being inconspicuous when a wizard had visited twice on the same day was a bit impossible, no matter how unhobbitish Bilbo was considered.

He wasn’t late, but the urgency with which Gandalf had dispatched him made him want to reach the Ered Luin as quickly as possible. Such was his hurry that he almost ran into Lobelia, who was gripping her umbrella in one hand and holding her askew fascinator with the other. She looked like she had been running as well.

“Bilbo Baggins!”

“Lobelia, hullo,” he greeted. After a second, he tried to feint left. She intercepted him. “I’m er, in a bit of a hurry, cousin dearest. Perhaps you could move out of the way?”

“I’ll move out of the way when you explain yourself! What do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m—”

“Because it looks an awful lot like you’re going on an adventure!” she pressed on, pushing her little hat into place. Curls of dark hair were escaping her careful coiffure and her cheeks were red with anger. “Have you truly gone mad, Bilbo? Do you want your clock-heart to break down? Again?”

“I know what I’m doing, Lobelia,” he lied. “Don’t patronise me.”

“Patronise you!” she scoffed. “More like be the voice of reason you seem to be lacking! I won’t let you run off into the blue to get yourself killed. Poor Aunt Belladonna asked me to make sure you didn’t do anything dafter than usual, and that’s what I’ll do! Back to Bag End with you!”

Lobelia reached to grab the lapels of his coat, intent of dragging him back up The Hill. Bilbo chose that moment to throw himself to the side, half-crouching and twisting, slipping under his cousin’s arm like a bar of soap slips out of one’s fingers. He broke into a sprint, shouting ‘sorry’ as he continued on.

Lobelia screamed behind him, furious and mortified, but Bilbo paid no mind to her words. He ran on and on and on, his clock clicking and ticking and tocking as his heart pounded against his ribs, feeling more alive than he had felt in years. Home was now behind, and the world unfurled ahead of him like a blossoming flower.

*** * ***

As Bilbo reached Brandywine Bridge, he realised one very important thing: There was no airship in sight. He slowed down, panting a great deal, and looked around. The sky was clear, and he found no dirigible flying to or away from the mooring mast. Bilbo stopped moving altogether and put his hands on his hips. Had they left early? Had Fíli told him the time of departure wrong? He squinted up at the clouds, thinking.

Over his wheezing, Bilbo heard chattering and bellowing. He crossed the bridge, still trying to regain his breath, and stopped when he reached the other side. There was a dwarven camp, or a dwarven open-air market, or a nomadic dwarven tribe. Either way, the tents and machineries and boxes he saw belonged to neither hobbit nor human.

The nearest dwarf—a mountainous hulk of a person with far too much hair on his face—noticed his presence and snapped at him to state his business. Bilbo jumped, his cuckoo bird giving a shrill twreee before Bilbo slapped it back into its little house. The dwarf stared. Bilbo tried for a smile.

“Hi. Er, hullo. I’m here to, er, join the Ered Luin’s crew?” he said, and cursed himself for making it sound like a question. The dwarf narrowed his eyes, tightening the grip on his mace, and Bilbo stammered, “Master Fíli knows me.”

“Does he, now?”

“Er,” Bilbo shifted his weight from one big foot to another. “Yes.”

The dwarf grunted. “Stay here. No funny business.”

Bilbo raised a placating hand. “Rest assured, sir, funny was never on my mind.”

With another grunt, the dwarf walked away. He went to talk to three other dwarves who looked a lot like him, though all dwarves looked more or less the same to Bilbo. Bushy beards, wild manes, stout frames. If you saw one, you saw them all. The dwarf jerked his head in Bilbo’s direction and he straightened, suddenly under the scrutiny of four beady eyes. He shuffled his feet and considered waving, but decided against it.

Two of the dwarves turned and left, disappearing between the tents and boxes. The other two remained, not taking their eyes off Bilbo. Surely they couldn’t think he was a threat? Fíli had said something about checking he wasn’t one, but he was a hobbit, for crying out loud. He had never seen a weapon outside the Shire’s Mathom-house, much less knew how to use one. Chances were he would grab a sword by the sharp end and cut his palm open.

After some minutes, the two dwarves that had left came back, but they weren’t alone. Behind them came Fíli, with his blonde hair shining under the midday light, and a brown-haired dwarf who looked far too serious to be in a good mood. Bilbo’s eyes darted to the bridge and considered bolting back home. It wasn’t too late to change his mind, right? It wasn’t too late to rediscover that voice of reason Lobelia had told him he didn’t have.

It was indeed too late, his mind supplied, a pair of hands covered in strange iron-and-leather gloves falling on top of his shoulders. The brown-haired dwarf leaned closer, clear eyes narrowing as they took him in. Bilbo blinked. He knew that iris colour.

“You’re Fíli’s mum?” he stammered. The dwarf raised an eyebrow. “I mean, the Captain?”

“Yes,” she said, her voice deep yet musical. “And you must be the hobbit.”

“Not the hobbit,” Bilbo mumbled. “Just a hobbit. One out of many.”

“Well, here you’re the one hobbit, so I suggest you get used to your uniqueness,” said the Captain, her hands dropping to her sides.

Fíli’s mum, Bilbo noticed, was about her son’s height, and her hair was tied back in one intricate braid. She also sported mutton chops, which were carefully trimmed and brushed. Bilbo could think of nothing that made her similar to the hobbit lasses back home. She looked much more commanding, yet radiated an air of finesse that not even the snobbiest girls in the Shire could manage.

The Captain canted her head and Bilbo realised that he had been asked something. He coloured, giving his cravat a nervous tug, and asked if she wouldn’t mind repeating her question. Her lips curled into a slight smirk, and Fíli grinned at him openly behind her.

“I said,” she told him, “I trust you haven’t forgotten anything.”

“Oh. Oh, no, no. No, I’ve brought everything.” Bilbo smiled. “I think. Gandalf helped me, er, pack.”

“Gandalf.” She glanced at Fíli. “Tharkûn?”

“Aye, Mum.”

“Hm. Fine.” She sighed, and that seemed to be all. The dwarves lingering around relaxed, as if she had loudly and publicly declared Bilbo someone not to be treated with mistrust. “Show our Master Hobbit to his quarters, son.”

Then she said something that sounded like she was gagging in her own spit. Bilbo blinked. Fíli rolled his eyes, but gave an obedient nod. In a heartbeat, he had linked arms with Bilbo, startling the hobbit out of wondering if the Captain’s choking noises could actually be some form of language and not just an intimidation technique.

“Come with me, Mister Baggins,” said the young dwarf. “I hope you don’t mind bunking?”

“Sorry?”

“We don’t have enough rooms for everyone to have their own,” explained Fíli, steering him in the direction of the mooring mast—which was still lacking an airship. “You’ll be sharing with three other people. Dwarves, of course, but I promise you they’re good company. One of them is even a cook! You hobbits like cooking, right?”

“We do, yes,” Bilbo mumbled, whipping his head this way and that as he observed what was going on around him. All the dwarves were dismantling their camp and packing everything into boxes, getting ready to leave the area. “Er, Master Fíli?”

“Yeah?”

“I am no expert when it comes to airships, and I have even less knowledge where dwarven creations are involved, but… where is the Ered Luin?”

“Right there.” Fíli pointed at the mooring mast.

Bilbo stared at him. “Are you mocking me?”

“What? No. It’s right th— Oh.” Fíli rubbed his nose, squinting up at the mooring mast. “How familiar are you with matematerials, Mister Boggins?”

“Baggins.”

“Baggins,” amended Fíli.

“And I don’t know much about those,” said Bilbo. “We hobbits work with things that can be found in nature. Our needs are simple. All that we require, the earth provides.”

“So you wouldn’t know about cloaking elements.”

Bilbo thought about his velveteen dark-brown cloak. Try as he might, he didn’t see the connection between something like that and an airship anywhere. “You mean like a shawl or a coat? A poncho?”

Fíli chuckled. “Yeah, you really don’t know.”

He didn’t say it with a mocking tone, just a highly amused one, but Bilbo felt a bit offended anyhow. He couldn’t even make an educated guess at how his own parents’ inventions worked, so surely no one could expect him to be knowledgeable where dwarven technology was involved.

Fíli continued to drag him along, talking about this and that, pointing at things, greeting dwarves as they neared the mooring mast. Bilbo waited for an explanation of what ‘cloaking elements’ were. He knew, though, that he was waiting in vain.

“Well, here we are,” said Fíli once they reached the mooring mast. He smiled at Bilbo and pressed the lift’s button. “Ever seen the inside of an airship, Mr Baggins?”

“Can’t say I have, no.”

“What about the outside?”

“Once. When I was, er, really very young. Just a lad.”

“Bet it knocked the breath out of you, yeah?” Fíli puffed out his chest as if he had designed and built every single dirigible in existence. “Magnificent things, airships. The Ered Luin’s one of the best around. Mum says I’ll be captain one day, and Kíli—that’s my baby brother—may be my right hand if he learns to behave.”

“Harsh,” someone said.

Bilbo turned around to see another young-looking dwarf, though this one had brown hair and his cheeks were peppered with thin stubble rather than Fíli’s odd whisker-like moustache and goatee. His eyes had a mischievous sparkle to them, and he was frowning at Fíli like this wasn’t the first time he had heard the blonde dwarf say what he had said.

The newcomer’s straight nose and his hair’s shade of brown told Bilbo all he needed to know: He was Fíli’s brother and the Captain’s other son, Kíli. Bilbo briefly wondered, yet again and not for the last time, what was with dwarves and their mighty ridiculous names.

“Truth can be harsh,” said Fíli.

Kíli walked over and punched him in the arm, then smiled at Bilbo. “Hullo.”

Bilbo stammered, “Er, hullo.”

The lift doors opened. The three of them shuffled in, Bilbo standing between Fíli and Kíli. He pressed his lips into a thin line and twiddled his thumbs, not sure of what to do. Should he talk? Should he stay quiet? Should he press himself up against a wall and pretend he didn’t exist?

Something jostled him and he squawked, looking over his shoulder. Kíli had one hand closed around his rucksack and was tugging. “I’ll carry this for you, Mister Boggins.”

“Kíli,” chided Fíli, “I told you Mister Boggins’ name wasn’t Mister Boggins.”

“No?” Kíli’s brow furrowed, and he managed to slip Bilbo’s rucksack off of his back even as the hobbit complained that he could carry his own stuff. “But Mum said Tharkûn—”

“Mum said Tharkûn said Baggins,” interrupted the older brother, crossing his arms with a frown. “You misheard—and told me wrong.”

“Don’t snip at me like that. It’s not like it’s my fault he’s got such a funny name!”

“Excuse me! My name is perfectly ordinary,” huffed Bilbo.

“Maybe for a hobbit, it is.”

“Kíli,” said Fíli, his tone a warning.

The lift opened. They stepped out without a word, Kíli’s cheeks puffed out in annoyance at Fíli. Bilbo was a bit nervous, but he couldn’t help smiling at the brothers’ antics. He wondered if they quarrelled more than they got on. He guessed he would find out during his time on the Ered Luin—which was suddenly very much there.

Bilbo gaped. It was splendid, the midday light bouncing off its duralumin-and-lacquer structure. Fíli had said that airships were magnificent, and Bilbo hadn’t believed him much. Now, laying eyes on the dwarven dirigible, he admitted that he had been wrong. He remembered his mother as she spoke of the buoyant airships that were commonplace east of Bree and a rare sight in their western hills, how excited and enamoured she had sounded, and he understood. For the first time in his life, he truly understood.

“You like it, Mister Baggins?” asked Fíli.

“I… Yes. Yes, of course I do.”

“You look kind of shaken,” said Kíli, peering at Bilbo’s face. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, yes! Don’t worry.” He pressed the palms of her hands to his eyes and rubbed, feeling foolish and self-conscious. “It’s just a bit overwhelming.”

“What is?”

“This all.” Bilbo gestured at the airship, but he meant more than that. “A day ago, if someone had told me this would happen… Well! I would have sent them on their merry way and recommended they see a doctor. But this is happening, and I’m both terrified and thrilled, and—” Bilbo shook his head, at a loss for words. “But dear me! How in the world do you keep this hulking mass from sight?” Bilbo asked, a delighted curiosity bubbling up his chest and bursting out of him in the shape of a giggle. “Is this the work of that cloaking material you mentioned, Fíli?”

“Aye, that’s right,” said the dwarf, grinning. “We engineered it.”

“Amazing,” gushed Bilbo. “Simply amazing!”

“It’s the invention of the century!” boasted Kíli. “I’d like to see those tree-shaggers try and outdo us. Not that they can, but watching them have a go at it and fail should be fun.”

“Lots of fun,” Fíli agreed.

Bilbo didn’t know who the ‘tree-shaggers’ were supposed to be, but he didn’t ask. Instead, he nodded and let himself be whisked off into the airship. He had imagined that boarding the airship would be life-changing, but in the end he didn’t even notice when it happened. The brothers had been talking nonstop and he had been so busy trying to keep track of their prattling that he missed the moment when he stepped into the gondola.

They walked down corridors and hallways, finally reaching what the brothers told Bilbo were the barracks. Even though he was a civilian, there was no room in the upper deck for him, and so he would be bunking with the crew in the lower deck. Bilbo was fine with that. Gandalf had told him he would be joining the crew, so he hadn’t expected anything else.

Bilbo asked if he would have any duties, and Fíli and Kíli shrugged in tandem. He decided to ask the Captain later. He doubted she would admit a hobbit into her airship without making him have some use.

Speaking of which, he realised with a start that he didn’t know the Captain’s name yet.

“What’s your mother called?” he asked.

“Dís,” said Kíli, putting Bilbo’s bag on top of the berth that hadn’t been claimed.

“Oh. That’s… nice?”

“Mm-hmm.” Kíli grinned. “Mum’s name is all pleasant-sounding.”

Bilbo had no idea how a one-syllable name could be ‘all pleasant-sounding’, but he nodded just like he had done at the mention of the mysterious ‘tree-shaggers’. It was becoming clear to him that he would be left scratching his head in wonder quite a lot during this journey.

“So,” said Fíli. “We’ll depart in about half an hour or so. You can wait it out here or go to the lounge and watch it from there.”

“Oh, you definitely want to watch it from there!” said Kíli, bouncing on the ball of his feet. “Not wait here all cooped up and miss it!”

Bilbo smiled politely. “All right.”

The brothers left shortly after, claiming to have lots to do. Since Bilbo was afraid of heights, he was convinced that watching as the ground grew smaller from long slanted windows wouldn’t be good for his clock-heart. With that thought in mind, he didn’t feel the slightest bit guilty when he remained in his room, missing the take-off completely. It was enough to hear the engines begin to rumble and the structure vibrate around him.

He would get on an airship after his clock-heart was working properly again, he decided. He would get on an airship—any airship—and let the wonderment wash over him as he gazed out the transparent glass walls of the gondola’s public area. He would feel sick at first, and then he would get over his fears little by little and end up feeling nothing but joy.

*** * ***

“Bilbo!” Fíli banged on the door. “Rise and shine, Master Hobbit! Breakfast’s ready!”

Bilbo groaned into his pillow, tugging the bedsheets up over his head. There was no way he was getting out of bed so soon. He had stayed up helping with the washing-up the previous night, and his arms still ached from all the scrubbing. Besides, dwarven cuisine just didn’t do it for him. It was tasteless, lacking in vegetables and fruits and spices, and usually a gloopy lukewarm pseudo-soup ‘rich in proteins and all the important stuff’, as Kíli had put it once.

The door rattled again under the strength of Fíli’s fist. “Bilbo! Are you awake?”

“Yes,” Bilbo said, resigned to his fate. “Yes, I’m coming.”

Bilbo heard Fíli stomp down the barracks’ corridor, his footfalls growing distant and then fading altogether. With another groan, Bilbo curled up and hid his head under the pillow. Maybe they would forget about him if he stayed put and quiet. There were lots of things to do around an airship, Bilbo had learnt not a day into the journey, and everyone would soon be neck-deep in chores and duties.

No one would miss a little mostly-useless hobbit. Whenever he was given something to do, it was in the kitchens—cleaning or washing or tidying up, he could do it quick as lightning. Anything else, the crew had soon learnt not to ask him to lend a hand. Especially where machinery was involved.

For the past two weeks, Bilbo had been abroad the Ered Luin, getting acquainted with many dwarves—the ones that would talk to him, that is—and even establishing friendships with some of them. His bunkmates came to mind: Bifur, Bombur, and Bofur. The three of them were pleasant and had some hobbitish traits that had made Bilbo grow comfortable around them in no time. Bofur was genial and jovial, Bombur was a food lover, and Bifur was a kind soul despite his oddness. If combined, they would make quite the respectable hobbit.

He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling, which was, in fact, Bifur’s berth. It seemed like he couldn’t find a balance. Where Bag End had been enormous and all for him, his lodgings in the Ered Luin were microscopic and had to be shared with three other people. But that was all right. Bilbo had grown used to it soon enough.

It reminded him of his childhood, just a bit. Back when he had visited his numerous relatives at the Great Smials and stayed the night, sleeping in a pile because no one wanted to be separated. One of his cousins—he forgot which one—had kicked him in the clock during the night, and Bilbo had writhed and cried his eyes out in hysterical pain until his mother repaired the broken minutes hand. There had been no more sleepovers after that.

None of the dwarves had hit him in the clock yet, so that was good. In fact, he hadn’t even mentioned having a clock-heart to most of them, and they didn’t seem to have noticed. The only ones who knew, thanks to Gandalf, were Captain Dís and her sons. Though they would have found out anyhow, even without the wizard’s intervention, because Fíli and Kíli had burst into his room one day while he had been changing and they had got an eyeful of his clock-heart. The memory still mortified him.

Captain Dís had been very unimpressed by his prosthesis, claiming that she had seen crazier things. She had, however, offered to have a look at it in a very kind tone. It was the sweetest she had ever sounded. Bilbo had refused despite her gentleness, still not comfortable with the idea of someone touching his heart. He had hidden behind the excuse that he needed an expert. The Captain had raised an eyebrow, her lips twitching into a small smile, and relented.

That little exchange had got Bilbo thinking about his journey and the reason behind it. In only a week’s time, he would be in the Lonely Mountain. In only a week’s time, he would meet the master clockmaker capable of fixing his heart. Bilbo couldn’t say he wasn’t looking forward to it, if only a little. There was also a great deal of trepidation, since he would have to let the clockmaker touch his heart.

During the past two weeks, Bilbo had seen the dwarves around him exchange casual touches with each other: A hug, a rubbing of cheeks, a bump between foreheads. He had even caught a glimpse of hands resting atop chests. It was all very typical and no one batted an eyelash. Bilbo, however, held himself stiffly whenever someone got too close.

His dwarf friends had stopped with the good-natured contact after they realised how pinched his expression turned. It wasn’t their fault. Bilbo would have loved being able to share a blanket with Bifur when he got homesick or let Bofur wrap an arm around his shoulders—but he couldn’t. He was so worried for his clock-heart that the idea of lowering his defences, of letting someone near, frightened him out of his mind.

With a sigh, Bilbo got up and got dressed in under a minute. He had perfected the art of changing into and out of clothes in the past fortnight. Being slow at it would mean leaving his clock heart exposed for longer, and he was very much against that idea. Who knew how the dwarves would react? Captain Dís and her children had been accepting, but that wouldn’t be the case with everyone.

Like a man walking to his death, Bilbo slunk out of his room and went to the mess hall. It was bursting with people. Food was flying and laughter was ringing. He got his meal and trudged up to where he had spotted Kíli. The young dwarf made room for him with a quick grin, going back to his meal without a word. He was either famished or running late. Bilbo suspected it to be a mixture of both.

“Good morning, Bilbo,” said Dori.

“Good morning, Master Dori.”

“Bombur’s been complaining that no one knows how to cook venison right,” commented the white-haired dwarf, poking at his gruel with a sneer. “Perhaps you’d like to lend him a hand after you’re done with breakfast?”

Bilbo smiled. “I wouldn’t mind.”

“Then you’ll find him at the kitchens, grousing away.” Giving up on his meal, Dori pushed his bowl away and stood up. “Have a good day, you two.”

Bilbo gave a nod of thanks and Kíli said something unintelligible around his spoon. He then went back to eating, pulling Dori’s bowl closer. Bilbo schooled his expression not to show his disgust at Kíli’s ability to eat two servings of that dreadful thing that called itself breakfast. He poked around his, very much like Dori had done, and forced himself to shove a couple of spoonfuls into his mouth. He hoped they would have another stopover soon. Then he would slink away to have a real breakfast at some inn.

Kíli sprang to his feet, having licked clean both bowls, and shouted a ‘see you later’ over his shoulder as he hurried away. Judging by how harried he looked, Bilbo surmised that his mother had asked him to join her at the cockpit, maybe even told him that his lessons would begin.

From what Fíli and Kíli had told him, Captain Dís had been wanting to start her youngest in the world of piloting for some time now. Bilbo understood it for the honour it was, but he was also very aware that if Kíli messed up, he would kill the rest of the airship along with him.

There was no other option but to hope Captain Dís knew what she was doing, and that Kíli didn’t have a meltdown and make the dirigible go up in flames or something.

Bilbo gathered the empty bowls scattered around the table and got up. He took them straight to the room where they did the washing-up and then headed for the kitchen. Bombur was waiting for him, and Bilbo was looking forward to stealing a few bites of venison while they cooked.


	3. Chapter 3

Dale was a huge town. Such was its enormity that Bilbo wasn’t sure he could call it a town even in the privacy of his thoughts. From what he could remember of the books he had read, Dale resembled a kingdom much more than a village or a city. There was something noble about it, with its stone houses and cobble streets.

The city of Dale had been founded in the valley between the south-western and south-eastern arms of the Lonely Mountain, back when Lake-town had become overpopulated and a group of people had decided to travel north and try their luck in the fertile valleys of the mountain. With time, its boundaries had extended far south and east, all the way to the River Carnen.

Nowadays, the people of Dale were on good terms with both the dwarves from the Iron Hills and the elves of the Woodland Realm, and the young kingdom prospered. Because that was what it was, Bilbo deciding, mentally tossing over his shoulder the idea that Dale was a town. It was clearly a kingdom.

Bilbo took a deep breath, relishing in the crisp mountainous air. After the first four days, it had started feeling stuffy inside the  _Ered Luin_ , and no amount of explanation from his dwarf friends that the ventilation system was up and running—and it was the  _best_  ventilation system because  _dwarves_  had made it—would make the stuffiness go away. He was a hobbit. He needed real pure air; not the  _second-hand_  stale one they kept cycling around the airship.

“Can breathe again?” teased Bofur, coming to stand beside him.

“As a matter of fact,” said Bilbo, “yes.”

Bofur laughed. “I’ll admit this air tastes better than the air in the  _Ered Luin_. The crew’s checking the vents as we speak.”

“And why are they doing that?”

“Oh, nothing,” Bofur assured. He pulled out his pipe and lit it. “Just that Dori took your complaints to heart and is making sure everything’s as it should be. I think the past few days he’s been scared you’d pass out from lack of oxygen or something.”

Bilbo rolled his eyes and held the lapels of his jacket tighter around his neck. He had forgotten to slip on a cravat that morning, eager to get off the bloody airship, and he hadn’t had the chance to go back to his quarters to get one yet. Things kept happening every time he tried to slip back into the gondola: Someone would drag him away to show him a craft, or make him sample food, or introduce him to a towering human who had never seen a hobbit before and wanted to meet him. There had been lots of the last, enough to make Bilbo start feeling like some sort of exotic pet.

At least the people were nice, and they had many delicious plates that they offered to Bilbo the moment he mentioned his race’s love of food. That took them a long way. It made the curious stares and disregard of his personal space almost bearable. ‘Almost’ being the key word. He had soon let it be known in no uncertain terms that he didn’t want anyone within arm’s length and covered it up saying that it was a hobbit thing. No one had seemed to mind, content with eyeballing him and commenting on his ‘big hairy feet’ and his ‘elf ears’.

“Cold?” Bofur asked. “You forgot your scarf thing.”

“Cravat,” Bilbo corrected, giving him a little smile. He couldn’t possibly tell him that he was scared someone might catch a glimpse of his clock, no matter how well they got on. “And yes, a bit.”

“Here.”

Bofur held his pipe between his teeth and removed his woolly old scarf. He held it out.

“Oh, no, no. Thank you, Bofur, but—”

“There we go!” The dwarf tossed the scarf at Bilbo’s face, making the hobbit squawk with indignation. “You’re welcome, mate. It’s a bit tatty and nowhere near as stylish and silky as your handkerchiefs—”

“ _Cravats_ ,” Bilbo muttered.

“—but I reckon it’ll do for now, eh? It’s one of Ori’s first crafts, you know.”

“Is it?” Bilbo peered at the scarf for a moment, admiring the handiwork. Then he wrapped it around his neck and tucked its end down the front of his shirt. Now no one would see his clock. “Doesn’t look like a beginner’s work.”

“That’s because Ori always excelled at knitting.” Bofur shrugged. “Everyone was floored when he chose to become a scribe; we were all expecting him to set up shop somewhere and live his days selling cosy and comfy clothes. Jumpers and the like.”

“But he surprised you all.”

“But he surprised us all,” agreed Bofur. He offered his pipe and Bilbo took it. “It was a blessing, in the end. He’s a damn fine scribe, and the Captain needs someone to keep all the papers from getting jumbled up.”

Bilbo blew a smoke ring. “Someone not her sons?”

“Well, I did say she needs someone to keep all the papers from getting jumbled up.” Bofur grinned at Bilbo, accepting his pipe back. “Not the other way around.”

They laughed and then said nothing for some time, passing the pipe back and forth in comfortable silence as the sun crawled above them, turning the morning to noon. After a while, Bilbo took a scone out of his pocket and began eating it. Seeing how dwarves didn’t have as many meals as hobbits, he had taken to carrying food around and nibbling on it when he was hungry.

North of Dale, hidden amidst low-hanging clouds, was the Lonely Mountain. It was very beautiful; Bilbo had never seen anything like it before. He gave it a long measuring stare and wondered what he would find in it. A clockmaker, yes. A workshop— _Erebor_ , he suddenly remembered. But what else? Would he find danger? Dullness? Creatures lurking in the cavernous bowels of the mountain? A shrivelled and solitary dwarf, blind as a mole after spending so many years underground? The questions were endless, and they buzzed inside his head like a hornet.

The most important question, he found, was this: How would his would-be saviour react to his clock-heart? Would he find it fascinating? Peculiar? Abominable? Would he turn Bilbo away or welcome him with open arms?

“You’re thinking hard,” Bofur noted.

“Mm? Oh.” Bilbo shook his head and smiled. “It’s nothing.”

“You sure?”

“Yep.”

“All right.” The dwarf took a puff of his pipe, twirling his moustache and looking at the Lonely Mountain with a lethargic kind of pensiveness. “You’ll be taking your leave of us soon, then?”

Bilbo nodded. “I’m afraid so, yes.”

“How soon?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Huh. Well, you’ll be missed.”

Bilbo felt his face heat up. “I’ll miss you all as well.”

“Hmm.” Bofur exhaled, smoke hissing out of his parted lips. “The lads and I were wondering just the other day—what could bring a hobbit so far from home? It’s none of our business, I know, but we can’t help feeling curious about it.”

Bilbo looked down, his hands caressing the borrowed scarf. It was indeed a much rougher texture than his cravats, but it was warmer. Funnily enough, it reminded him of those long winter nights when he would curl up in the main drawing room of his home right next to the fireplace, wrapped up in a thick blanket, and doze off.

It would be easy, telling Bofur what had pushed him out of his home and pulled him across Middle-earth. All he had to do was open his mouth and the words would come tumbling out. He  _wanted_  to tell Bofur. He wanted to rely on a friend, rather than having the choice of relying on someone being done for him—though he was grateful that the Captain and her sons knew.

Still. Telling a friend on his own volition. It was appealing. Bilbo’s hand wandered a bit further down, and he paused when he felt a heavy round weight through the layers of fabric instead of his clock-heart. Then he remembered the pocket watch in his breast pocket. It was an old thing that Captain Dís had given him to get away with the constant ticking and the hourly  _cuckoo_ ing. He had pointed out that pocket watches didn’t go  _cuckoo_ ; she had told him to say she had retrofitted it. Bilbo had given in after that. Arguing with the Captain was like trying to hold something with greased hands. Besides, being able to cover up his situation had made him dizzy with relief, and still did.

With a sigh, he decided that it was too soon to tell anyone. He had met Bofur less than a month ago. They got on, yes, but they didn’t know each other nearly well enough. He would be exposing the most vulnerable part of him to a complete stranger soon enough, and only out of necessity, so why put himself through a similar torture before time and without need?

He glanced at Bofur, mustering up a smile. “You shouldn’t feel all curious about inconsequential hobbit business. It’s just that: Inconsequential.”

Bofur laughed, and there was certain tone of defeat in the sound. “Suspected as much. Boring little creatures, you hobbits.”

They locked eyes, and Bilbo knew Bofur didn’t mean it at all.

“Indeed we are.”

*** * ***

He left the following morning, right after daybreak. The city was silent around him as he made his way to the stables, and only a few people, laden with sleepy eyes and shuffling feet, were there to see him mount a rented pony and leave. There goes the little funny fellow from the west, Bilbo imagined they would mutter amongst themselves. There he goes, off to who-knows-where, off to find his fortune, off to have adventures.

Off to get himself killed.

Which was the opposite of what he was aiming for, really, but he had to admit that it was always an option. Death was always a possibility, and if something went awry getting his heart fixed— _not fixed but recalibrated_ , he corrected himself—then he would be six feet under in no time. Why, he could be riding to his death!

Bilbo pulled the reins and the pony stopped with a whinny. He reached over and stroked its neck, his arm moving automatically. He hadn’t even bothered asking if it was a boy or a girl, nor had he had the mind to check. He also hadn’t bothered saying goodbye to his new friends, which was very rude of him. He had figured that he would have time for all that later. Solving the issue with his clock-heart came first.

What if he never got out of the mountain, though? His last words to Fíli would have been ‘shove off, you canary’ and would he never have the chance to apologise to Bifur for falling asleep on his whittling tools the night before. They would remember him as that one hobbit that spent some time with them and then vanished with nary a word of farewell—if they remembered him at all.

Bilbo twisted in the saddle and looked back. He hadn’t ridden for long, but he had already made it past the borders of the city. In a few hours, the constructions would be nothing but distant spots of civilisation hovering in the horizon. Unless he turned back now. Maybe he could postpone his journey a day or two more. See the  _Ered Luin_  off, restocked and maintained, and watch it make its way to the Iron Hills. Or maybe he could go with them, and go looking for  _Erebor_  only after they left the dwarven kingdom of the east and stopped by Dale again.

Perhaps he would feel comfortable enough by then to tell Bofur about his clock-heart. He would tell Bofur and Bombur and Bifur, and maybe Ori. He could even ask them to accompany him to the Lonely Mountain and be there for him when he stripped off his shirt and let another touch his heart. Fíli and Kíli could come too. And maybe the Captain, if she wasn’t too busy and could spare a few days.

They would all say yes, he was sure. They were lovely like that.

“Bilbo Baggins, stop it,” he muttered. He cupped his cheeks and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. “You calm down and think this through before you go and put your foot in it.”

Bilbo whistled lowly and the pony resumed walking. He tried not to think much. Like his father used to say: All it takes to go from thinking to overthinking is living. He was alive and he was trying to avoid what came after, so the next thing to do was emptying his mind. Occupying his time with inane things, like trying to discern the flowers by the road. Spring gentian, poppy, thistle, fairy lantern. There. He felt better already.

There was no reason to start panicking. He should have started panicking the moment Gandalf first appeared in his doorstep. If he hadn’t panicked then, he had no right to start panicking now. For ill or better, he was almost at the end of his journey, and he would see its conclusion soon. Then he would either go home or… ask to be buried someplace with flowers. There was no need to get him and his belongings all the way back to the Shire. A quiet little place in the outskirts of Dale would do.

Bilbo’s clock ached, and it made his heart ache in turn. He doubled over in pain, gripping the saddle horn so hard his bones creaked. He worked on his breathing, first taking shallow breaths and then working up to filling his lungs with the cool northern air. He let out a relieved sigh, rubbing his chest to loosen his cramped pectoral muscles. They always got like that whenever he had a really bad episode. It was like they were trying to squeeze the clock out of his body.

How ironic it would be, to die on the road to his salvation. And he was so near! There was no doubt in his mind that he would reach the mountain before nightfall. Would there be any signs indicating where in that hulking mass of rocks was the workshop? Bilbo hoped so.

For now, however, all he had to do was ride. The pony hadn’t stopped its calm walking despite Bilbo’s jostling on top of it, and the Lonely Mountain was getting closer with each minute that passed. Bilbo could feel it. He had always felt time like a physical thing, what with a clock being part of his anatomy and all, but now each tick of his seconds hand seemed to reverberate through him.

It was hours before Bilbo heard anyone else in the great expanse between Dale and the Lonely Mountain. The sun had already reached its summit and had started to dip closer to the horizon, though it was high enough not to worry the hobbit with thoughts of having to set camp for the night. He had been thinking of stopping for a snack when he became aware of the clopping of fast-approaching equines.

Finding himself not alone all of a sudden, and without any sort of weapon to defend himself if need be (though he wouldn’t have known how to wield it), made Bilbo panic. He shook and tugged at the reins, not knowing what order to give the pony. The pony, of course, grew restless under him and almost throws him off the saddle. It didn’t care for their chasers.

“Stop that! Go! That way!” Bilbo told the pony, bumping his heels against its sides and pulling at the reins to steer it back into the road. “We have to go! We have to— Oh, bother!”

Mugged in the middle of nowhere. Great. Fantastic. Just what he had been needing. They would rob him blind and he would have nothing to pay the clockmaker with.

That thought triggered another, a much scarier one that had Bilbo choking back a shriek: His clock was made of solid gold. Would they try and take it from him? Would they care if he told them he needed it?

“Halt! Hobbit!” yelled a voice over the clopping, so near and imposing. “Halt!”

Now Bilbo did shriek. “Oh, no, please don’t hurt me!”

The other horses came to a stop next to Bilbo’s pony, kicking up dust as they dug their hooves into the dirt. Bilbo coughed, his eyes watering. To make things worse, the stress made his cuckoo clock start trilling, the bird jumping out of the little window and pushing against his shirt’s fabric time and time again. Bilbo tried to shut it up, but couldn’t. He was too agitated.

 _Do not lose your temper_ , said the  _Rubrics of the Clock-heart_.

“Bilbo, hey, peace,” said the voice, and he recognised it now. Kíli continued, “We just wanted to catch up with you.”

“We didn’t think you’d make it so far in such short time,” added Fíli.

“Yeah, since you aren’t used to riding and all that.” Kíli leant forward in his saddle, his expression growing alarmed. “Are you crying? Did we really scare you that much?”

“No, you silly dwarfling,” Bilbo muttered. He shoved the bird into his chest again, but not before its little gold beak had pierced through his shirt. Then he pressed his palms to his eye sockets and rubbed. It stung. “You got dust in my eyes!”

“I didn’t—”

“Sorry, Bilbo,” Fíli interrupted. “We didn’t mean to. We just thought you’d wait until we came back from the meeting with the Lord of Dale before leaving, so we had to hurry after you.”

An accusation laid there, like a snake in the grass.  _We thought you’d say goodbye_. Bilbo didn’t rise to the bait, and instead let it glide over him as if he hadn’t noticed what Fíli’s words implied. He cleared his throat and clucked his tongue; the pony began to move, and the brothers spurred theirs to ride by his side.

“Yes, er, that.” Bilbo cleared his throat. “I’m afraid I couldn’t wait a second longer. You know the nature of my journey. Time is of essence.”

“Still, you could have waited!” Kíli said mulishly. “Mum wouldn’t let us know if we could go visit Uncle until the meeting was over, and by then you had already left so we couldn’t tell you we were coming with you!”

“Oh, well, how was I supposed—” Bilbo began, but then the words sank in. “Sorry, but did you say ‘uncle’?”

“Yes,” Kíli nodded, “Uncle Thorin! He’s our uncle and Mum’s brother.”

Fíli grimaced. “Mum told us not to tell, Kíli.”

“Oh. Right. Well, he would’ve found out the moment we got to  _Erebor_  anyway.”

“Wait, so you know Thorin?” Bilbo asked, bringing them back to what was important. “He’s a real dwarf and not some weird olden creature of eras past that’s, er, really good at time-magic or… or something, er, something like that?”

Now he just felt ridiculous for saying that out loud. He hadn’t meant to, but the words had started to tumble out before he could stop them, and cutting himself off would have made him feel only more embarrassed about it. He shifted in the saddle, playing with the reins, and looked down.

“Er, no?” said Fíli. “He’s a normal dwarf. Maybe a bit quieter, but still normal.”

“You’ll like him,” Kíli beamed at Bilbo. “And he’ll fix your heart right up. You’ll see! He’s never had a case like yours before, I don’t think, but that only means he’ll take it all the more seriously. You won’t have to worry about your heart breaking ever again, I promise!”

“Aye.” Fíli nodded, a sober but proud smile on his lips. “He’ll take good care of it.”

They rode in silence. At one point, Kíli grumbled something in that strange guttural language. Fíli seemed to agree with whatever his brother had said; for they spurred their ponies and Bilbo’s own picked up its pace when it noticed the other two start trotting ahead. When Bilbo asked, the dwarves replied that they wouldn’t make it before nightfall if they didn’t speed up a little. Bilbo agreed to the faster pace readily enough, unwilling to spend a night in the roadside. His back and buttocks protested the bouncing, however.

As they progressed, the mountain grew nearer and nearer, but Bilbo almost didn’t pay it attention now. Just like the first time he stepped into the  _Ered Luin_ , Fíli and Kíli bombarded him with words that left him feeling like he had read a very complex tome and understood nothing. Though he supposed the brothers could be considered very complex, in their own way.

Near dusk, they reached the mountain. Everything was painted with subdued hues of oranges and lilacs, and the patches of tall grass surrounding the area swayed to a gentle breeze. Bilbo had never seen such simple yet magnificent beauty, but Fíli and Kíli lost no time in admiring the scenery. They got off their ponies and slung their rucksacks over their shoulders, and then turned to Bilbo and looked at him as if expecting he would do the same.

“Why are we dismounting?” he grumbled, but slid off the saddle all the same. He ached in places he would rather not ache at all. “We don’t think we have reached the shop yet.”

“Yes, we have,” countered Kíli.

“Sort of,” added Fíli.

“But it’s nowhere to be seen!” protested Bilbo. He looked around. No sign of any shop or inhabited place anywhere. “What is it, hidden under a rock?”

“More like behind it,” Fíli said and then moved away.

“Come on, Bilbo,” Kíli said, resting a hand on his shoulder. “We mustn’t delay. Set your pony loose so it may go home.”

“I want to go home as well,” Bilbo mumbled, but no one heard him. Louder, he asked, “So where is  _Erebor_? Do you boys know?”

“You mean you don’t?”

“No, Kíli, I don’t. I have never actually been to  _Erebor_  before.”

“But then how would you have found it?”

“I would have looked for the shop, or a sign leading to it,” Bilbo said. He had been convinced that finding  _Erebor_  wouldn’t be difficult, but the bewilderment in Kíli’s tone and now his face told him otherwise. He began to feel ridiculous again, something that he was starting to despise. “That’s what one normally does.”

Kíli rolled his eyes. “If one’s a hobbit then yes, apparently.”

“Stairs this way,” called Fíli.

“Let’s go,” said Kíli, and Bilbo had no choice but to trail after.

The trailing-after bit, however, soon morphed into stumbling-after. Even with his nimble and agile hobbit feet, he found it hard to navigate through all the bits of loose and jagged rock. Kíli grabbed a handful of the back of Bilbo’s collar and proceeded to half-drag him up the steps after he lost his footing for the sixth time. Bilbo fumed and raved mostly in silence, but he still let his disgruntlement be known. They were supposed to be stairs, and stairs weren’t supposed to be death traps!

After what felt like hours of tripping and scraping his hands against the cold hard steps every time Kíli failed to catch him, they reached the end of the stairs. Bilbo didn’t know what he had been expecting, but heh ad certainly been expecting  _something_. Instead, what he found was  _nothing_.

“Er…” He frowned. “Um.”

“You got the key?”

Bilbo jumped and whipped his head around to look at Kíli, his heart racing. They knew about his clock, yes, but how did they know about his key? Not even the Captain had mentioned it. But Kíli wasn’t looking at Bilbo; his eyes were fixed on Fíli.

“Bit stupid to have come all this way without it, don’t you think?”

The blonde dwarf took off a long silver chain that had hung around his neck up until then. In it was a strange- and heavy-looking key, bigger than Bilbo’s small and delicate one, and definitely not made of the same material. Fíli strode over to what was, by all appearances, a mere stone wall and inserted the key into a crack in the surface. He turned it and the wall groaned, the contours of a door springing before Bilbo’s eyes.

Kíli gave a little whoop of victory and gave his brother a friendly shove. “You didn’t even have to look for it this time!”

Fíli tried not to break character, but ended up grinning anyway. “I guess I didn’t.”

They ushered Bilbo inside and shut the door, all evidence of its existence getting lost in the stone the moment it closed. Bilbo was amazed. He wanted to ask how that could be done. Was it science? Alchemy? Magic? But he knew they wouldn’t tell him even if he was the embodiment of politeness when making his inquiry.

He let it go. There were more pressing matters that needed his immediate attention. Getting out of the cramped and winding tunnel they were in came first. The brothers didn’t seem to mind it, but Bilbo was starting to feel a bit… compressed. One thing was the round wooden hallway of his home, filled with either sunrays or moonbeams; another was this squarish rock nightmare, deprived of natural light and plagued with sputtering gaslight.

“Why are the lamps lit?” he whispered, following the dwarves down the corridors.

“The light system activates upon opening of the door,” explained Fíli, not bothering to keep his voice lowered. It echoed off the walls and into the enormous room that they entered.

Bilbo gaped. It wasn’t a room at all, but rather some sort of platform that connected the corridor from which they had come with long stone walkways that took one to who-knows-where. Bilbo looked up, and he didn’t see the ceiling, so high up it was. What he did see were the engravings on the walls, the chiselled surfaces, the glittering adornments. He noticed that there were strong thick pipes running along the walls and archways, going from and to places unknown, carved and decorate with just as much detail as everything else. Warm dots of gaslight peppered the pillars and columns and walls, like stars in a dark sky.

“This isn’t a workshop,” said Bilbo. “This is a kingdom!”

“Was,” Kíli said.

“A long time ago,” expounded Fíli for Bilbo’s sake. “Far too long for it to matter now.”

Bilbo bit his lip. There it was, again, the need to ask. But he knew better than to pry into the history of dwarves. It didn’t concern anyone but them, or so they said. Bilbo gave a little nod and tightened his grip on the straps of his rucksack. It felt heavy on his pained back, after a long day of riding, and he was starting to wish there were more sofas or armchairs lying about in this abandoned kingdom.

Fíli must have noticed the way Bilbo shifted his weight, as if his feet weren’t big enough to hold him, which was silly because he was a hobbit; for he steered them in a particular direction and began talking of hot baths and warm beds. Before long, they were in what the brothers called the barracks—it brought Bilbo back to his very first day on the  _Ered Luin_ —and Bilbo was told to pick a room. He was so tired he stumbled into the nearest one, and Fíli helped him spread his cot atop the dusty and musty bed. Kíli had already run off to set up their own room.

They would clean up and get things sorted out in the morning, Fíli promised Bilbo. The young dwarf was sporting a reassuring smile that reminded Bilbo of Captain Dís when he had been vulnerable in her presence. He smiled back as best as he could through the exhaustion and let Fíli help him undress. The unbuttoning of his shirt was left to him since he didn’t want to risk Fíli’s grazing his clock-heart, but the dwarf dutifully slipped off his braces and tugged down his trousers.

“You’re good at this,” Bilbo told him, not really registering what he had said.

Fíli chuckled. “I have a little brother.”

That made sense, Bilbo supposed. He didn’t have any siblings to compare, and he wasn’t close with his many cousins. With only his underwear on, he rolled into his cot and fell asleep before Fíli had even left his room. He didn’t dream, and had a peaceful night of good rest.

*** * ***

The following day, Fíli and Kíli were nowhere to be found. Bilbo had discovered this when he had wandered into their room, having found it after having opened at least a dozen other doors, only to find it empty. Their rucksacks were there, as well as some of their heavier travelling clothes and most of their weapons, but the dwarves themselves weren’t.

Bilbo didn’t fret. They were young but old enough to be on their own, so he didn’t dwell on it much. He went back to his room and got cleaning. Exploring on his own could prove catastrophic: He could get lost or bump into something or someone unpleasant.

When Bilbo’s stomach grumbled, he took some of his rations from his rucksack and ate a light meal. He was getting used to small servings with nothing too flavoursome or substantial, and he positively hated it. After all this was over and done with, he would return to the Shire and throw a huge party with lots of foods and drinks—and he would ingest most of the things.

He patted his belly, promising himself that he would regain what weight he had lost, and put his cutlery away after wiping it down with one of his last clean handkerchiefs. In the silence, his clock sang its hourly song. It was noon. Bilbo caressed it, his fingers dipping under his shirt to feel the edges of his minutes hand, to ghost over his seconds hand as it moved, to press his fingertip against the pointy end of the hours hand until it almost drew blood. He withdrew then, shaking himself and going back to cleaning.

It was well into the afternoon when the brothers appeared, and Bilbo asked if they needed help tidying up their room. They exchanged a glance and told Bilbo to follow them. Bilbo knew immediately, and with such certainty that it felt like condemnation, that they were taking him to the clockmaker. They were taking him to Thorin.

“Shouldn’t we get refreshed first?” he inquired, attempting to stall for time. Fíli and Kíli’s grip on his shoulders didn’t lessen, and they continued to guide him down corridors and tunnels and hallways. “Settle in?”

“No,” they said in unison.

They went down a flight of stairs, and then another, and then another. The gaslight lit their path, but Bilbo felt the absence of sunlight like a thousand needles pricking his skin. He rubbed his hands up and down his arms, and he shivered at the stale moistness in the air.

As they went deeper into the mountain, Bilbo stopped feeling cold and damp, and began to feel the stone heat up beneath his feet. Fíli and Kíli said nothing, so he said nothing as well, and turned his attention to trying to memorise the turns they took. He desisted not after long, but the knowledge that he had at least tried made him feel pleased.

Finally, they reached a pair of looming doors made of stone or metal or both, Bilbo couldn’t tell. There were noises inside: Hissing and clanging and clicking. It reminded Bilbo of his youth, when his parents’ workshop had still been full of life and racket. Kíli knocked on one of the doors, or rather banged on it, and they waited. Inside, the noises seemed to quieten.

It seemed like an eternity, but the doors finally opened, just enough for the dwarves and Bilbo to wiggle sideways into the room beyond. Then the doors closed again with a slam.

“Uncle!” called Kíli.

“Uncle, we brought your hobbit!” said Fíli.

The brothers strode further into the room, which was, of course, the workshop. It was full of clocks and watches and all things related to time and timekeeping. Bilbo was quite content to linger near the entrance and pet his clock-heart with trembling hands. Kíli noticed, however, and told Fíli, who went back and slung an arm over Bilbo’s shoulders. He began to drag him into the shop.

“Come on,” said the dwarf. “Uncle’s at the back.”

The workshop was enormous, bigger than The Hill itself, and Bilbo wondered how they would ever find Thorin in a place so large and cluttered. Fíli instructed him to sit in a stool and then joined his brother in the search for their uncle. Bilbo took a deep breath and went back to stroking his clock. He felt the tick-tocks against his fingertips, even and predictable, and it made him relax.

In the table next to him was a clock. It was made out of pinewood and Bilbo could see its gears through the round hole where its face was missing. He picked it up and traced the symmetrical pattern that someone had carved onto its surface. The work was exquisite, much more refined than what could be found in the Shire or Bree. Having a clock so pretty resting on the mantelpiece back home would be lovely. Not that  _he_  needed it, but his visitors did.

All of sudden, his clock-heart gave a jolt and Bilbo bolted out of the stool, the pinewood clock smashing against the ground. He stood frozen, his posture straight and stiff. The hands of his heart began to shudder. Bilbo made to reach for his heart when another jolt coursed through his body. He squeaked in pain, the seconds hand stilling in place. It pointed west. His cuckoo began trilling, and the minutes hand realigned itself with a snap to point west as well.

Bilbo yelped. His head was spinning. This had never happened before. He managed to get a hand on his clock-heart and he tugged. It hurt! The clock wasn’t meant to be removed, but he felt that he might die if he didn’t rip it out before the hours hand went haywire as well. He tugged again, this time with more conviction.

The hours hand began to shake, and a trail of white smoke escaped out of his clock’s face. Bilbo  _yanked_  this time, and it was the worst pain he had ever felt, but the hours hand snapped then, spinning in circles until it settled with deathly accuracy right where the minutes and seconds hands were. All three pointed west, pointed home, pointed—

“Hobbit,” said a voice.

Bilbo looked to the side, and he found two aquamarines like the ones his cuckoo bird had for eyes, except these had the warmth that all living things possess. He stumbled and fell back into the stool, almost tipping it over and crashing to the floor. Fíli was there before it could happen, lowering him gently until he sat, panting and clutching his chest.

“Bilbo?” asked Kíli. “Bilbo, are you okay? Uncle, what did you do to him?”

“His heart’s on fire!” Fíli exclaimed. “Smoke’s coming out!”

Bilbo tried to push away Fíli’s hands. He didn’t want his heart to be touched or looked at, but the dwarf had unbuttoned his shirt and was feeling around his clock anyhow.

“Fíli, no,” he pleaded weakly. “Don’t.”

“He doesn’t like it, Fíli!” said Kíli, wrenching his brother’s hands away. “Stop it!”

“I have to check—”

“Leave him,” said Thorin. “It’ll be fine.”

“Hurts,” Bilbo spat through gritted teeth. He would have wailed and thrashed to get his point across, but moving wasn’t tempting. “A lot.”

“Uncle,” Kíli said, his voice filled with urgency.

“Do not mollycoddle him,” snapped the older dwarf. “I said leave him. Fíli.”

The blonde dwarf relented with a mutter, apologising to Bilbo and stepping back. Bilbo smiled weakly at him but said nothing. He didn’t want to risk talking because he knew it would hurt quite a bit. Instead, he gave his clock a final pat and started buttoning up his shirt. He couldn’t remember if he had put on a cravat that morning, but he didn’t bother checking if Fíli had tossed it aside in his hurry to have a look at his clock.

Bilbo cleared his throat and straightened slowly, sighing with relief when no wave of agony racked his body. In front of him, three dwarves had their eyes trained on him and followed his every move like a cat follows a bird.

“Er, sorry about that,” he said, his voice hoarse. He cleared his throat again. “I don’t know what happened there, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. My heart’s been acting up for some time now.”

“We didn’t know it was so bad,” said Kíli.

“Neither did I, but there’s a first time for everything, hm?”

His attempt at a joke fell flat, and a pregnant silence ensued. Kíli shuffled his feet and looked at Thorin. Thorin’s narrow-eyed stare was fixed on Bilbo, drinking in his every detail. It made the hobbit nervous, but he didn’t want to snap at the clockmaker to stop unnerving him. He needed to be in the dwarf’s good side.

Thorin turned and went to a table, where he sat down and started tinkering with something. Fíli and Kíli exchanged a glance. Bilbo frowned. Perhaps hobbit and dwarf customs were different, but it was a universal tradition to introduce yourself when you met someone. Bilbo got on his feet, weak and unsteady, and gave a step forward.

“Good afternoon,” he said.

Thorin only grunted in return.

“I am Bilbo Baggins of Bag End. Perhaps your nephews have mentioned me?”

Again, Thorin only grunted. Bilbo began to lose his patience.

“Well, good, because I’ve got a clock for you to fix,” Bilbo said, taking another step forward. He swatted Fíli’s hand away when he tried to hold him back. “I’m telling you this because I don’t know if what just happened made it obvious enough.”

Thorin stopped his tinkering and turned to pin Bilbo with that clear-eyed gaze. “I know.”

“So will you fix it? I’ve come a long way to see you and it’s of utmost importance that my clock gets fixed as soon as possible.”

Thorin looked at him up and down with an unimpressed look. Whatever he found, he considered it not worth his time; for he turned back to the worktable and resumed his tinkering. His back was to Bilbo, and so Bilbo couldn’t see what he was doing that was so important. For some reason, that made him angrier. He felt like Thorin was trying to make him feel unimportant and uncomfortable so he would admit defeat and scurry away.

“Excuse me,” he insisted, taking yet another step closer to the clockmaker, “but it  _is_  of utmost importance that my clock gets fixed. If not by you, then by someone. I won’t beg, but I will ask, and if you say no then I’ll be on my way to find someone who won’t have any qualms against fixing my heart.”

Thorin’s eyes locked with Bilbo’s again. “You’ve got a clock instead of a heart?”

“What? No!” Bilbo shook his head. “I have a heart, but it’s too weak to do his job on its own. The mechanics of the clock keep it pumping. If the clock stops, my heart will follow soon after.”

“And you want it to have it looked over.”

“Yes,” said Bilbo.

“Who’s done its maintenance all these years? Why don’t they do it?”

“It really is none of your business,” Bilbo retorted. “But if you really must now, the inventors who grafted the clock to my heart passed on some years ago. They taught me the basics to take care of it, but I’m no expert.”

“Clearly not.”

Bilbo crossed his arms; he was scared that he might slap Thorin if he didn’t. In his chest, the hands were still doing anything but tell the time. “Will you do it or not?”

“Prosthetic works aren’t my area of expertise,” said Thorin after a long pause. “Clocks, yes, but not clocks that are a part of someone’s organs. I will need to do some research before getting anywhere near your heart. We wouldn’t want to kill you by accident.”

“No, we wouldn’t,” Bilbo agreed.

After that, Fíli and Kíli escorted him back to his room. Bilbo flopped face-down onto the bed and didn’t move, not even when his clock started digging painfully into his flesh. He would have to wait for an undetermined amount of time for the clockmaker to get ready for him. Bilbo didn’t want to wait. He wanted to get all this sorted out and go home.

His clock hands had seemed to agree, pointing west during his conversation with Thorin. But then they had begun to spin slowly, like a compass, when Thorin had moved away. If Bilbo hadn’t known better, he would have thought they were following the dwarf.

“It’s going to be fine, Bilbo,” said Kíli, rubbing his back. “You’ll see.”

“Kíli’s right,” said Fíli. He sat next to his brother on the bed mattress and put a plate of food next to the hobbit. “Just relax for now. Stress isn’t good for you, so stay calm.”

“Uncle knows how important this is, so I’m sure he’ll be as speedy as possible,” Kíli told Bilbo. He coaxed him upright and shoved a loaf of bread into his hands. “Eat. And you should be glad that Uncle wants to know more about clock prosthesis before poking at yours, don’t you think? He could make a mess!”

“Kill you,” said Fíli, “or break your heart.”

“Yes, I know, thank you.”

The brothers took an exaggerated bow. “At your service!”


	4. Chapter 4

Once they had stopped fussing over Bilbo, Fíli and Kíli left. They had told him that they would be at the end of the hallway in their room. The lines had been delivered with such innocent expressions that Bilbo had no doubt the brothers would do anything but that. In fact, he was almost sure that they would skulk back to the workshop to talk to their uncle.

Their uncle! Now Bilbo understood why Captain Dís had offered to have a look at his heart. She was a Durin: A master clockmaker just like the rest of her bloodline. It made him embarrassed and ungrateful for the help that had been offered to him, but there was nothing to be done about it now.  He would have to sit, wait, and hope that Thorin did his research on clock prosthesis as speedily as possible.

A part of Bilbo—a very noisy and fretting part—was scared that the dwarf wouldn’t get to fix his heart in time. When Gandalf had mentioned _Erebor_ and its resident, Bilbo had thought that the clockmaker would need but a glance at his clock-heart to know what needed doing. That hadn’t been the case, however, and now Bilbo was struggling to keep his worry from consuming him. Gandalf wouldn’t have made him traipse across the world in vain, after all. The wizard was many things, but cruel wasn’t one of them.

Bilbo rolled to his side and brought his knees up. He didn’t usually sleep in that position because the edges of his cuckoo clock’s roof dug into his skin when he did, but it was one of those nights in which he felt like curling up, so he did. Sleep eluded him for a long time, and it was only when he heard Fíli and Kíli return and close their door at the end of the corridor that Bilbo’s drowsiness finally pulled him under.

When he woke up, it was still night. There was no way of knowing inside the mountain since no natural light filtered in through the stone, but Bilbo’s ever-present clock let him know what time it was. He tried to go back to sleep, but found it impossible. He tossed and turned until his bed was a mess and his limbs were all entangled in the sheets, and then he got up with a huff of annoyance. If he was awake, he might as well do something productive.

Bilbo dressed quickly and stepped outside of his room. He stood there for a moment, wondering how to occupy his time with Fíli and Kíli so soundly asleep, and in the end decided to try and find the workshop by himself. There was a rope in his rucksack which he could use to avoid getting lost.

Nodding to himself, Bilbo went and got it, tied it to a lamp on the hallway’s wall, and started walking. He tried to remember the path at first, but after an hour or so he gave up and started roaming about, more interested in admiring the carvings on the stone than finding the workshop. His cuckoo sang twice before his eyelids began feeling heavy once more. By then, Bilbo had decided that he had done enough exploring for one night, so he retraced his steps with a shuffling and somnolent gait. He was dead to the world the moment his head touched the pillow.

Bilbo’s mind, however, was far from asleep, and it plagued him with strange dreams from which he couldn’t wake. They were nonsensical and full of vibrant colours, dancing shadows, and foreign laughter. He knew, logically, that there must have been some story going on, but he couldn’t remember it when he woke up. Not that he had any time to dwell on it, what with Kíli bouncing on his mattress and looking very much like a hobbit youngling who had been promised a whole jar of biscuits.

“What is it?” Bilbo asked, his voice hoarse with sleep.

“Come on, Bilbo,” said Kíli, tugging at his nightshirt. “Breakfast’s ready!”

“Breakfast?” He squinted at the young dwarf. “You don’t mean that dreadful gloop I was forced to have on the _Ered Luin_ , do you? If so, then I’ll pass.”

“Hobbits don’t pass up food.”

“We do if the supposed food is rubbish,” Bilbo said smoothly, rolling over and stretching. His spine gave a pleasant crack. “We hobbits don’t eat rubbish, you know. We are rather fond of _good_ food, not all food.”

Kíli rolled his eyes. “Uncle cooked. Rabbit stew.”

“ _Stew_? For breakfast?”

Now Kíli frowned. “He said you’d like it.”

“Well, er, yes, I do like rabbit stew,” assured Bilbo. “Just not in the morning, I guess? At least, I’ve never had it in the morning before. It feels, er, odd.”

“But you like it.”

“Yes.”

“And if you like it, you always like it, at any time of the day, no?”

“Er, yes. I supposed I do.”

“And it’s better than the gloop?”

“Oh, yes.” Bilbo nodded. “Yes, absolutely.”

“Then let’s go!” Kíli jumped off the mattress and snatched up Bilbo’s clothes from the backrest where he had hung them the night before. “Or it’ll get cold, and Uncle won’t heat it up for you. He’ll say it was your own fault and make you eat it like that.”

Bilbo changed into his clothes. He no longer minded the dwarf brothers’ eyes on him, but he still turned away to keep his clock-heart as concealed as possible.

“Charming, your uncle.”

Kíli snorted behind Bilbo. “Yeah. But… he _is_ really nice once he warms up to you.”

“You said he’s against warming up.”

“Food.”

They giggled as Bilbo finished tucking his shirt into his trousers, and giggled as he slipped on his breeches, and continued to giggle as they made their way down the hallway. It hadn’t been that funny, Bilbo thought, but maybe wanting to laugh was reason enough to find everything humorous.

Kíli guided him down corridors and into a room that he hadn’t seen the previous day. It was like a large dining room, with a high vaulted ceiling and glittering gems incrusted into the columns and walls. Even the stone tables and chairs were covered in sparkling emeralds and sapphires and rubies and many other gemstones Bilbo wasn’t familiar with. Fíli and Thorin were waiting around the centre of the room, a small fire crackling near them. Rabbit stew could be smelt from the entrance, and Kíli and Bilbo lost no time in joining the two dwarves at the table.

“Bilbo,” greeted Fíli.

“Good morning, Fíli.” Bilbo beamed at him, then inclined his head at the clockmaker. The hands of his clock-heart _tick-tock_ ed viciously in his chest, straining to point west. “Master Thorin.”

“Master Baggins.”

“Oh, please don’t call him that, Uncle,” whinged Kíli, already talking around a spoonful of stew. “If you’re all proper with him, then we’ll have to be all proper with him, and I don’t want to stop calling Bilbo Bilbo.”

“You can still call me Bilbo, no matter what you Uncle calls me,” said Bilbo.

Kíli shook his head, but it was Fíli who spoke, “It isn’t right.”

“I understand this is some sort of dwarven etiquette thing, and I am pleased that you’d want to stick to it even with a non-dwarf such as myself, but please don’t treat me any different. We’ve been informal with each other from the beginning, and I would hate to see that ease between us get stifled.”

Bilbo accepted a bowl of stew from Thorin, who was silent but looking at him with piercing blue eyes. He smiled because it was the proper thing to do, and Thorin didn’t smile back but instead gave a sharp blink that had his long dark eyelashes brushing against his cheekbones. The clock-heart’s seconds hand gave a funny jiggling shake before going back to working correctly.

“Thank you.”

Kíli turned to Thorin. “Uncle, can we?”

“Your mother,” he said, his stare never wavering. Bilbo felt blinded by its intensity and busied himself with stirring his stew. “What does she call the hobbit?”

“Bilbo,” said Fíli and Kíli in unison.

Fíli added, “She called him Master Hobbit at first, but then she dropped the formalities.”

“Then you may call the hobbit by his name,” declared Thorin, going back to his stew, “and I shall call him whatever I please.”

“Excuse me, but ‘the hobbit’ can hear you,” said Bilbo, fighting back the urge to upend the bowl over Thorin’s head, “and he doesn’t like being spoken of as if he weren’t in the room. You may call me Bilbo or Baggins, whichever you like best, but do not refer to me as a _hobbit_.”

Thorin raised an eyebrow. “Is that not what you are?”

“Yes, but I should like you to remember me as an individual,” Bilbo explained, tasting the stew. It was better than he had expected. “Not as one of the many hobbits of Middle-earth. I’m sure you understand. If I called you dwarf all the time and never used your name, wouldn’t you feel slighted?”

“No. Your regard of my person matters little to me.”

“But you should care about being treated the way you deserve,” Bilbo pointed out. “So if I treat you incorrectly, or anyone does, you should mind it, not brush it off because you think whoever did it is unimportant.”

“He’s got a point, Uncle,” said Kíli, who cowed under Thorin’s hot glare. “A bit! Just a bit.”

“We shall speak of this no more,” said the clockmaker.

Breakfast was a quiet affair after that. Not unpleasant, but Thorin refused to be pulled into any kind of conversation, and he communicated through grunts and looks—or rather Looks with a capital L, as Bilbo would soon learn to think of them. But Fíli and Kíli were merry and talkative, and they answered Bilbo’s questions regarding _Erebor_ and the family business as best as they could.

It turned out that they weren’t sure who in the line had started the clock-making. Some said it had been Durin the Deathless, who had mastered the art of time-keeping to such extent that he had bent his own time on earth to outlive even his children’s children’s children. It sounded like a fairy-tale, and Bilbo gobbled it all up as he took little bites of his meal.

Absorbed in the story as he was, he almost missed it when Thorin stood up and began gathering the dirty bowls and spoons. Bilbo and the brothers joined in, and soon everything was piled up neatly onto the table.

“Kíli,” said Thorin, “do the washing-up.”

“But it’s Fíli’s turn!”

“Fíli has other duties,” Thorin stated, which earned him a low groan from the blonde youth. Whatever those duties were, Fíli wasn’t too thrilled about them.

“Then can Bilbo help me out?”

“Master Baggins is not to make anything strenuous.”

“It’s all right, I don’t mind,” Bilbo chimed in. “It’s not like doing the washing-up needs a lot of effort, and there aren’t that many things to wash.”

Thorin’s eyes raked over him. “Do as you wish.”

With that, he was gone, the tall stone doors closing behind him as he slipped away to do whatever clockmakers did. Clocks, probably? Fíli mumbled something under his breath and also left, already looking bored out of his skull. Lifting the small pile of bowls, Bilbo fought back a grin and turned to Kíli. The dwarf jumped to his feet and led the way to a cavernous chamber with something that looked like an enormous fountain made out of many smaller ones. Clean fresh water flowed out from the very top, cascading down with a melodic sound.

They washed the dishes in anything but silence, sniggering over silly jokes and humming snippets of cleaning songs. Bilbo didn’t remember ever having so much fun while doing something as mundane as scrubbing a spoon clean. He had never resented house chores—hobbits excelled at anything that had to do with keeping one’s home spotless—but he had never found them particularly enthralling. Now he understood why other hobbits at the market had sounded so excited when talking about tidying up with their spouses after throwing a party or teaching their lot of children to swipe the floor or dust off the curtains.

With a trill, his cuckoo clock marked the beginning of an hour—or the end of one, depending on Bilbo’s mood. Kíli and he wrapped things up, rubbing everything dry and putting it away in a nearby cupboard. Bilbo didn’t understand how things were organised in _Erebor_. A feast hall used for a four-people meal? Sleeping chambers that were fifteen minutes away from said feast hall? A workshop that was in the deepest place of the mountain? Nothing made sense. Then again, dwarves still didn’t make much sense to Bilbo, even if he had been cohabiting with them for almost four weeks now.

“Would you like to see the library?” Kíli asked. “There aren’t that many texts in Westron, but it’s a nice place, and Uncle keeps it clean.”

“Oh, I’d be delighted! Lead the way.”

They walked down so many corridors that Bilbo began to grow dizzy at one point, and the flickering of the gaslight made him see sinister shadows on the walls, and his clock’s gears churned with unease inside their gold case. Kíli seemed to notice; for he began talking and didn’t stop until they had reached their destination. He grew quiet then due to the raw amazement in Bilbo’s face. The library was huge! Everything was huge in Erebor, yes, but this room had a feeling to it that made it look larger than life.

“Can I move in here?” Bilbo blurted, and Kíli laughed.

“You’ll have to ask Uncle. I don’t think he’d mind.” The dwarf clapped Bilbo on the shoulder and began walking down an aisle. “Come! The books in Westron are this way.”

There was a nook filled with tomes and textbooks that Bilbo could read, and he delved into the scriptures with rapacious curiosity. He tried getting his hands on a book written in dwarvish more than one time, if only to see the written form of their language, but he gave up after Kíli pushed them all away from him with a kind but firm grin. The message was clear. Bilbo didn’t press the issue.

A few hours passed in companionable silence, though the tranquillity was more thanks to Kíli’s napping than to the young dwarf’s ability to remain quiet for any period of time. Bilbo didn’t mind. He had hoped to debate over scrolls and stone tablets with his friend, but he should have guessed that Kíli wasn’t as interested in reading.

It was when Bilbo was wondering if Kíli would suddenly wake up if he tried to grab that green tome written in dwarvish that Thorin appeared. Bilbo covered his mouth with a hand, and thus his squawk of alarm was short-lived, but the clockmaker still heard it. Kíli slept on, unperturbed.

Thorin walked over to his nephew, crossed his arms, and watched him. Bilbo’s clock-heart’s hands did that weird jiggling shake again, and he rubbed at his chest automatically. The scene unravelling in front of him was endearing, but Bilbo soon felt like he was intruding on some sort of personal thing. Thorin’s expression had gone all soft just by drinking in the sight of Kíli’s—admittedly adorable—sleeping face, and Bilbo didn’t think that the older dwarf let his guard down in front of strangers often. He set his book down and cleared his throat as delicately as possible.

As if jostled back to reality, Thorin stiffened and then relaxed. He turned to Bilbo and jerked his head. _Follow me_. Bilbo’s eyes flickered to Kíli. The stoic clockmaker actually rolled his eyes. _He’ll be fine_. Begrudgingly, Bilbo got to his feet and followed Thorin down the aisle. He had thought they would go to the workshop, but the dwarf lead him to another section of the library and made him sit at a desk. It was full of manuscripts and thick volumes with yellowed pages, but none was in Westron.

“I’ve been reading,” Thorin said, gesturing imperiously at the texts, “as I promised.”

“Ah.” Bilbo rubbed his toes together. “All right.”

“There is not much information,” continued Thorin. “Luckily for you, there is just enough for me to know what to do. Had you gone to a lesser clockmaker, I doubt you would have got your clock fixed.”

“Sorry, but my heart—it doesn’t need fixing. It’s not broken,” Bilbo explained, his tone carrying more bite than he had intended. “I understand it might give that impression, but it’s not. It’s simply been acting a bit stranger than usual. All I need is a quick recalibrating and I’ll be on my way.”

“Are you a clock expert, Master Baggins?”

“I— No.”

“Then do not argue with me.”

Bilbo gaped. “Excuse me, but I will argue with you if I feel like doing so! It’s my heart what you’ll be sticking your… your _paws_ into! I have a right to inform you of what’s happening to me and correct you if you’re wrong since _I am_ the one acquainted with my clock-heart and everything that’s happened to it over the past fifty years.”

“You know nothing of clocks,” snapped Thorin. “You just said so yourself. And just last night, it was you who told me your clock needed fixing!”

“Speech error,” Bilbo quipped.

“Why should I trust your verdict when it could very well be blatantly wrong?” Thorin pressed on, his hands coiling into fists. “Even if it’s you who puts your life at risk, I’m the one who could end it—and all because of a mistake you made!”

“Well, pardon me, but I don’t think I’m making a mistake here,” Bilbo sniffed, raising his chin in defiance. Jumping out of the stool to face Thorin standing up would be a bit too overdramatic, but Bilbo was seriously considering it. “I know my heart better than anyone. Certainly better than you, who haven’t even caught a glimpse of it.”

“So show me.”

“Show you what?”

“Show me your heart.”

“What— Oh.”

Bilbo’s hands flew up to his neck, where he had hoped to feel the silk of his cravat but instead found his own warm skin. He had forgotten to wear it again. Five decades wearing cravats and it only took him a couple of days to forget their existence altogether. He gripped the collar of his shirt, effectively blocking most of his neck from view.

“Hmm, no,” Bilbo said. “No, I don’t think so.”

“I am going to have to see it sometime,” Thorin pointed out, “and you are going to have to show it to me.”

“All in due time.”

“If I could examine it now, maybe I would—”

“Yes, thank you, but no.” Bilbo gingerly slipped off the stool and smoothed down his shirt, though not before buttoning it all the way up. Damn him and his habit of leaving the first two buttons undone. “I will leave you to your reading then. Lots of research still needed, right?”

For a moment, Thorin looked as if he was debating whether to yell at Bilbo or just outright murder him. In the end, the clockmaker relented and stepped aside, giving a mock bow. Bilbo curtsied with an overdone flourish of hands—he would later stay up all night wondering why he did _that_ of all things—and marched away. He didn’t look back, not even when Thorin huffed loud enough for the sound to echo.

*** * ***

“You left me alone,” Kíli groused, dropping next to Bilbo.

“I did.” Bilbo flicked a page. He had brought some books back to his room, but he decided that he would avoid the library like the plague if Thorin was in it. “You’re a grown boy. I assumed you could find your way back on your own.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t know _you_ could.”

“It’s getting easier,” Bilbo said, “navigating this place.”

“It was never hard to begin with.”

“Not to you, maybe, but to me?” Bilbo chuckled and shook his head. “I’m used to the sun and the stars and so many other things that tell me where to go and how to do it. In here, it’s all rock. Rock here, rock there. What am I supposed to do with rock?”

“Hear it speak.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s a dwarf thing, Kíli.”

Bilbo closed his book and tossed it onto his bed. Then he went fishing for a snack inside his rucksack. An overripe apple was all he found, but he cut out the brownish bits and ate the rest. It was tasty enough, and his stomach stopped grumbling. Kíli scooped up the parts Bilbo had cut out and ate them, which made Bilbo feel a bit disgusted with the young dwarf, but he said nothing.

Fíli joined them a little before dinnertime, looking haggard and about ready to plunge straight into bed. He said as much, and Bilbo complained that growing boys shouldn’t go skipping meals, so he relented and sat down with them instead of heading off to sleep. Kíli flicked apple bits at his face until Fíli’s annoyance had chased away his tiredness.

“Will you stop!” he snapped, punching his brother in the arm.

“If I stop, you’ll start snoring in a minute,” retorted Kíli.

“Now, now.” Bilbo wiped his knife clean with a handkerchief and stood up. “No fighting in my room, boys, if you please. How about we go down to the dining room and prepare your uncle a nice supper, hmm? He must be exhausted after being cooped up in the library all day.”

Fíli and Kíli exchanged a look. “All right.”

“Good. Lead the way, then.”

“I thought you said navigating _Erebor_ was getting easier?” teased Kíli.

“Cheeky,” said Bilbo, but then added, “Little by little, yes.”

When they reached the dining room, Kíli was tasked with making a fire while Fíli and Bilbo retrieved the cooking elements. There was a bit of rabbit stew left, but it wasn’t enough for a proper dinner, so Bilbo started rummaging through the boxes and bags in the cupboard to see what could be done. He found some potatoes, bread, and corned beef brisket. Enough for two sandwiches each with a side of mashed potatoes. It would have been all the lovelier with some cheese, but there was none to be found.

Bilbo set to work, the dwarf brothers flitting to and fro at his behest, and soon a delicious scent pervaded the room. Kíli took a small bite of everything, proclaiming he was the testing the quality, and then tried to sneak another bite. Bilbo smacked his hand away promptly with the metal butt of his knife. Fíli laughed and Kíli shot Bilbo a dirty look, but the hobbit wagged a finger.

“Leave some for your uncle. Go.” He made a shooing motion. “Go get him.”

Kíli did as told, and when he returned it was with a dark-haired and clear-eyed clockmaker in tow. Thorin looked at the food and then at Bilbo. His expression was thunderous, and Bilbo almost rolled his eyes because it was obvious the dwarf was still in a hissy about their little conversation earlier that day.

How petty could he be, to still be irritated by something so menial? Bilbo heaved a sigh and started serving the plates. He did it rather forcefully, and it was then that he realised that he was also still harbouring negative emotions. That would not do. He had to keep his temper in check or it would affect his clock-heart and possibly kill him. Bilbo rolled his shoulders and tried to relax, dispel the creeping angriness.

Thorin accepted his plate without comment and sat down opposite from Bilbo. Fíli and Kíli must have realised that something was going on; for they attempted to strike up a conversation only once and then remained quiet after failing. Bilbo felt guilty. They didn’t deserve having an awkward meal because his uncle and he were having some sort of silent quarrel.

“So, er,” Bilbo began, wiping his mouth with a napkin, “what did you do today, Fíli?”

“Manned the workshop some,” said the boy. “And dug out some really old scrolls from the old section of the library.”

“Oh? What for?”

“Research,” Thorin cut in. His voice was sharp and his eyes were the colour of ice.

“I see, I see.” Bilbo nodded, and decided to ignore the clockmaker’s rudeness altogether for the sake of having a pleasant evening. “And did you find anything useful?”

Thorin said nothing, so Fíli spoke: “We’re not sure yet. Like I said, I dug the scrolls out of the old section, and they are written in an old version of our language. It’ll take a while to make sense of them. Maybe a few days.”

“It’d be faster if Mum were here,” sighed Kíli. “She’s good with runes.”

“But Mum won’t be here until next month.”

“I’d rather we figured out what the scrolls say before next month,” Bilbo said. “I am in a bit of a hurry to get my clock working properly again, as you all know.”

“Aye,” Fíli nodded, “we know.”

They washed and put the dishes away after dinner, and Fíli retired for the evening shortly after. Kíli decided to have a smoke while strolling around, and invited Bilbo to join him, but they had run out of Old Toby a long while ago and he still wasn’t used to the bitter taste of dwarven pipe-weed, so he declined. He and Thorin were left sitting by themselves in the large dining room, and the silence was so think that Bilbo could almost hear their breaths reverberating in the chamber.

Finally, Thorin stood up with a slap to his knees. He tugged a strand of long dark-and-silver hair behind his ear and said, “I’m going to the library.”

Bilbo looked up from his toes, surprised. “So late?”

“There’s not much else to do around here, after closing the workshop.”

“You close the workshop?”

“Clock-making is my craft and my passion, Master Baggins,” said Thorin, looking away, “but all things must be done with a certain degree of… restraint. Else we might lose ourselves in it and never be found again.”

“Of course,” Bilbo said. “Makes perfect sense.”

Thorin gave him a wry smile. “Does it.”

“Er, well, yes. I mean, I’m— My mother liked to invent things. She was so absorbed one day that she didn’t realise things had gone awry. The steam engine she had been working on kind of, er, blew up on her face. She had a third of her body replaced with prosthesis.” Bilbo wringed his hands and cleared his throat. “So I guess I understand what you mean. About restraint.”

Silence fell and settled, but it wasn’t uncomfortable this time. It felt a bit like the quietness that grew between old friends when words were superfluous for understanding each other. It was nice. Bilbo had never experienced it, not even with the brothers or the dwarf friends he had left behind at the _Ered Luin_.

The gaslight flickered, casting dancing shadows on the walls. Bilbo’s clock ticked, and its hands began to try and point north. He gave it a pat to calm it down, and Thorin’s eyes flashed to his chest for a moment, and then back up. He didn’t ask to be shown the clock, and Bilbo didn’t offer. But it was all fine because Bilbo _had_ told Thorin that he would see it—in due time.

“Would you like to join me?” asked Thorin.

Bilbo smiled. “All right.”


	5. Chapter 5

They had been in the library for an hour, but to Bilbo it had felt like much less. For some reason, even if Thorin could be hot-headed and a pain to be around, his company was enjoyable. Bilbo found that he almost didn’t notice the way his clock kept acting up. It had started having episodes of craziness more often since his arrival at the mountain, and Bilbo worried that there was something in _Erebor_ that made his heart lock up in such a way. Still, he tried not to dwell on it too much. It would be depressing to find out that the place where he was meant to get recovered was detrimental to his health.

Bilbo had considered telling the brothers or Thorin, but decided not to in the end. They didn’t know enough about his heart to be able to help him yet, so he would only make them worry needlessly. Besides, his cuckoo clock had gone completely mad only once so far, so there was nothing much to fret over for now. He would voice his concerns when they became a bit more… tangible. Or visible. Like smoke coming out of his chest and clock hands piercing his skin.

Thorin cleared his throat, and Bilbo realised that he had been staring at a piece of parchment—filled with scraggly symbols he most certainly didn’t understand—for the last five minutes. He set the crackly paper down and smiled apologetically at the clockmaker.

“Ah, yes?”

Thorin set a tome in front of Bilbo. It had a cover made of stone and its pages were bound by a long thin silver chain that caught the light. Bilbo was almost sure that it was silver. On the cover were some strange runes, more similar to the ones Bilbo had seen around the Ered Luin during his flight but still very different.

He wanted to reach out and touch the book, but refrained. Instead he folded his hands in his lap and looked at Thorin, waiting for the explanation that he was sure would come. The dwarf didn’t disappoint. He ran a hand through his long mane, the bits and pieces of metal in his clothing catching the light for an instant, and then he gestured at the tome.

“I found something here that might be of use. A passage near the end of a chapter on mechanical prosthetics,” he said, and then added, looking amazed for having spoken aloud at all, “I didn’t think I would find anything here.”

“Why not?” Bilbo peered at the tome with curiosity. “Is this not a medicine book?”

“Yes, but this is a recompilation of ancient scriptures on…” Thorin hesitated only for a second, his pale eyes flicking to the side and then back to Bilbo. “On alternative medicine.”

“Alternative,” repeated Bilbo.

“The literal translation would be ‘unconventional’.”

Bilbo paused, then chuckled. Oh, how some of his relatives would claim to having known it all along if they ever heard about this! He was odd not only in the Shire, but in the rest of the world as well. For some reason, he wasn’t surprised. It still stung a little, but not enough to upset the ticking of his tender mechanism.

Bilbo’s lips twitched with an almost-smile. “Well, I have never been the norm,” he said, and it was easy, how the phrase he had learnt to use as a shield against harsh words flowed out of his mouth.

Thorin gave him an odd look. “This book is not about biomechanics, Master Baggins. It is about experimental ointments and salves. The only reason I picked it up was because I thought your gears might benefit from some oiling, and I wanted to see if anything here would be better suited for a clock that’s stuck in someone’s chest.”

“I’ve always used regular oil.”

“And that’s worked perfectly well for you, has it not?”

Bilbo narrowed his eyes at the dwarf. “Yes, it has. It has kept me alive for fifty years, in fact, so you won’t be hearing any complaints from me!”

“Are you always so stubborn?”

“With you? Yes.”

“Oh, so it’s with me.”

“Well, yes! You think you know everything there is to know about clocks and that scares me because it’s my _heart_ you’ll be touching, all right?” Bilbo said, and his voice was quivering. “And you could break it if you’re careless, and I don’t want to feel that kind of pain—ever.”

“I shan’t break it.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You will break it yourself if you continue down this path!” snapped Thorin.

“I’m sorry? What path, exactly, are you talking about? The path in which I chose to fly across the world to try and save my life? Hm?” Bilbo raised his eyebrows, standing straight with his hands on his hips. “Or perhaps you mean the path in which I’m unwilling to just pop my shirt open and let you poke at my clock because I’m not sure you’re sure of what you’re doing! In any case, I think I’m going down a rather nice path, don’t you think?”

“Self-destructive,” said Thorin. “You don’t look after your clock-heart the way you should.”

“Did the passage near the end of the chapter on mechanical prosthetics tell you that?”

“No. You did,” Thorin said, and Bilbo gaped. He had never said such a thing! The clockmaker sighed and picked up the tome, his fingers tracing the runes carved onto the front cover. “Your behaviour. The way you treat yourself says a lot, Master Baggins.”

“I treat myself fine,” Bilbo protested.

To this, Thorin had no reply. He stood there, eyes hooded as his rough fingertips went back and forth against the book’s stone cover. It looked like he had fallen into some sort of trance, and Bilbo was starting to wonder of he should just get up and leave when Thorin moved: He set the tome down and opened it at a page that Bilbo thought was random, but soon realised it wasn’t.

In the pages, so old that they seemed to be made out of dust and spider webs, was an intricate design of a small roundish but obviously complex engine. Attached to it was a heart, and the drawing was so realistic that Bilbo had to look away for a moment. His spotless gold clock was attached to a pulpy mass of beating flesh that looked very much like the one depicted there. Sometimes he forgot that.

Thorin tapped the book. “Instructions on how to help a weak heart work until it’s strong enough to pump the blood on its own.”

“My heart’s chronically weak. I’ll always need a clock.”

“I don’t know that,” Thorin said. “I don’t know if you need it; I don’t know if you don’t.”

“Thorin—”

“No, Master Baggins, please. I try to understand you, so you now must try to understand me: I am a master clockmaker and you ought to at least try to trust me. You did fly across the world so I could help you, but I cannot if you won’t let me near.”

“I was taught not to let anyone near.”

Thorin sat down on the chair next to Bilbo, their knees almost brushing. He gathered his hair and started braiding it into a loose side-plait, the smaller ones that always hung from his temples left untouched. The agility with which his dexterous fingers tamed his wild mane left no doubts in Bilbo’s mind as to who decorated the clocks in the workshop. Not that there had ever been any doubt in Bilbo’s mind, but this just confirmed his assumptions.

“Try to trust me, Master Baggins,” murmured Thorin, his eyes averted.

*** * ***

Bilbo didn’t sleep that night. The hands of his clock kept shaking, as if trying to point at something that lay beyond the stone walls of his room. He ignored them as best as he could, but the pang in his chest didn’t go away. In the end he gave up trying to get some rest.

As a substitute for the dreams he should be having, Bilbo grabbed one of the books he had brought from the library and sat down to read. It was a retelling of a story he had been told by his mother when he was a child. He was astounded by how lovely the author was making it sound. He remembered it as very tragic and sad, with nothing good coming from the love shared by the main characters, but the writer made it seem as if the affection they felt for each other was worth all the suffering it brought them. Bilbo couldn’t wrap his head around that.

He read for hours, not minding his cuckoo clock when it sang, and finally crawled back into bed around the time Fíli and Kíli normally roused. If they came looking for him, he would tell them he was tired and ask them if it would be too much of a bother to bring him some breakfast. Whatever they cooked would be fine—he hoped.

As if his thoughts had summoned them, the brothers barged into the room and flopped down onto Bilbo’s mattress. Kíli wasn’t wearing his furs or metal adornments, instead going for a simpler leather-and-fabric attire. Fíli had shed the metal in his clothing as well, but kept the furs. Bilbo wondered if they had worn everything for the past few days because they weren’t sure if their uncle would approve.

“Hullo, Bilbo,” said Fíli.

“Slept well?” asked Kíli.

“Not as well as I would have liked, I fear,” he said. He didn’t even have to fake the yawn that escaped him. “I’m quite tired and have no intention of getting out of bed any time soon.”

“But it’s time for breakfast! You’re not thinking about skipping it?”

“No. I am thinking about getting you two to bring me some food here.”

“I don’t think,” said Fíli, “that Uncle would like that.”

“What your uncle may like or dislike is no concern of mine. You are his kin and so he will be expecting you to accompany him, not me. I’m just the oddity passing by and shall be gone soon enough, when he’s done researching and gets on with this.”

Bilbo tapped his chest, his gold clock _tick-tick_ ing. Kíli rolled onto his stomach, almost draping himself on top of Bilbo, and gave the hobbit the must hurt and betrayed look he had ever seen. Fíli made an unhappy noise and moved as well, propping himself on his shoulders and frowning down at Bilbo with such intensity that he was reminded of both their mother and uncle.

“You’re leaving us just like that?” asked Kíli. “Won’t you stay to see Mum? She’s coming in a month.”

“Oh, no. No, I couldn’t stay that long.” Bilbo sat up in the bed and shook his head. “I’ve already been away for almost a month! My reputation won’t be so in tatters if I make it back swiftly.”

“Making it back swiftly would include an airship, though, wouldn’t it?” Fíli pointed out, letting himself fall back onto the bed. “And the _Ered Luin_ ’s the only one going westwards enough to leave you at home. It’s in your best interest to wait for Mum, in the end.”

Bilbo glared down at the blonde dwarf. He hated it when Fíli said sensible things in that smug tone. It reminded him of himself when he was younger and brasher. He flicked the boy’s nose. Fíli squawked and covered it with both hands, returning Bilbo’s glare from behind his fingers.

There was no hurry to get back to the Shire. No one was waiting for him there, and Gandalf had said he would make sure his things were looked after—or at least his garden, but Holman wouldn’t leave Bag End unsupervised if he knew Bilbo wasn’t around to keep snooping neighbours and relatives at bay. Bilbo could stay. He could delay his return as much as he needed or wanted.

The ticking of his clock began to hurt, like a sharp needle stabbing his heart. Tick-tock, tick-tock. Stab-stab, stab-stab. He rubbed his chest and sighed.

“You don’t understand. I can’t— I need to go back.”

“And do what?” asked Kíli, his expression turning tempestuous. “You haven’t got a craft, or a business, or a family! You have nothing to return to, so why the hurry?”

“Kíli!” Fíli reached over and yanked his brother’s hair so hard the brunet yelped.

“You know, boys, if you two are here to bully me into staying,” Bilbo sniped, “then you may cease trying because I won’t do anything I don’t want to do. And I don’t want to stay longer than necessary. The moment this is working without a hitch once more—” He tapped his heart again, “—is the moment I’m gone.”

Kíli and Fíli looked like Bilbo had said something unforgivable again, but he didn’t feel guilt. Wanting to go home wasn’t wrong, and he shouldn’t think it was, even if going home was just that: Going back to his armchair and his books.

Bilbo sighed and got up. He was still tired, but the brothers wouldn’t let him sleep any more. Their comments and looks would have kept him awake anyhow. He would just have to wait until that night and pray that nothing made him stay up again. The clock-heart needed him to get a good night’s sleep; it had always hiccupped when he hadn’t.

He asked Fíli and Kíli to give him some privacy, and they took it the wrong way. He knew they would have no matter how politely he had phrased it. He let them go, hurt and fuming and stomping, and took out his little box from his rucksack. It was Sunday, and his clock needed winding. Everything else could wait.

*** * ***

It was a week later that Bilbo became aware of the fact that everyone was avoiding him. He entered a room, Fíli and Kíli stayed only long enough to say hello and remember they had something to do. He hadn’t actually seen Thorin since that night at the library, and he was sure that he had heard steps hurrying away from him more than once.

Bilbo was flummoxed. He supposed he had said hurtful things to the brothers, but they had been hurtful in return—or at least Kíli had been. And Thorin didn’t have any reason to be avoiding him! Hadn’t he asked Bilbo to trust him? Hadn’t he looked like he wanted them to be closer, or at least civil to each other?

 _Bebother these dwarves_ , he thought. They were only making things more complicated with their childish actions. If his presence had become so unbearable, then all they had to do was find out the right treatment for his aching clock. After all, he only needed to get his heart fixed— _recalibrated_ —and then he would be on his way.

The hands of Bilbo’s clock ticked against his chest, and he felt each click like a spear through the heart. He sighed and rolled his shoulders, relaxing the muscles. It still hurt, so he decided to ignore it and do something productive—like cooking. They hadn’t asked him to cook for the last four days, and he was beginning to miss the familiarity of a kitchen, or at least of pots and pans and the sizzling of a fire.

He went to the dining room and, after much trial and error, got a fire started using his matches since his lighter refused to cooperate. Then he got some ingredients from the cupboard and prepared a light tomato soup. It wouldn’t have been as light if there had been more tomatoes in an edible state, but it was obvious that dwarves didn’t care for such things as much as hobbits did.

That made Bilbo sad, for some reason, and his clock-heart’s mechanism groaned in his chest. He shook himself and licked the ladle, burning his tongue a little. The soup tasted nice enough, seeing how he had no basil nor black pepper nor celery to add that extra flavour. It would do. His dwarves weren’t all that invested in good cooking. A nutritious meal was all they wanted.

Bilbo put everything away and cleaned everything he had used. The soup was left over a small fire so it would stay warm. He didn’t know when anyone would reappear to eat, but he wasn’t going to let their food grow cold if he could help it.

Like in the previous days, he ate in silence. The soup was nice, of course, but there was a bitter taste in his mouth that made him enjoy it less. Bilbo told himself it was the lack of basil. Never mind he had never cared much for that herb.

“Master Baggins?”

Bilbo jumped and almost spilled his bowl of soup all over himself. He did spill some on his fingers, and it was hot enough to make him screech a very unflattering word as he set the bowl down and shook his hand out. When he looked up, he found Thorin observing him with both eyebrows raised. He coloured.

“Yes?”

Thorin inclined his head. “Good morning.”

“It’s well past noon, as a matter of fact,” Bilbo said, automatic, and pulled out a handkerchief to wipe his hand. “I would know. There’s a clock in my chest.”

Thorin’s eyes fell to Bilbo’s chest, but he had remembered to use the cravat this time. He had been remembering to use it ever since that morning a week before, when the brothers had looked so crushed by his words.

If Thorin was disappointed to find the wall of fabric that made even catching a glimpse of Bilbo’s clock impossible, he didn’t show it in the least. He just strode forward and served himself a bowl of soup. It was then that Bilbo noticed the goggles hanging from his neck. They were huge and freakish and quite obviously retrofitted, a combination of leather and metal that was the lovechild between a spyglass and a mask, full of gears and swivelling tiny glass parts sticking out. Gandalf’s own pair looked dull in comparison.

Bilbo realised he was staring, and he focused on his soup. It was a very interesting soup, with a lovely shade of red and floating tomato skin bits. There was no reason not to give it his undivided attention.

They ate in silence for a while, and even though Bilbo had been eating like this for a few days now, the silence that now reigned felt somehow different. More… more. He didn’t know how to explain it, but it was different. It wasn’t as empty as before, and though the room was now literally fuller since there was one more person in it, the sensation went beyond the physical. Bilbo liked it, but it made him fidget, so he stopped thinking about it. His clock’s hands kept trying to point east.

“Master Baggins,” said Thorin after a while.

Bilbo hurried to swallow a spoonful of soup. “Yes?”

“I would like you to try an oil,” the clockmaker told him, and something in Bilbo’s face must have given away how unpleasant he found the comment because he hastened to add, “It’s preparation. For the… surgery.”

“Surgery?” Bilbo’s hand went up to cover his chest. “It’s not a surgery. My parents did it hundreds of times and it was never something as dire as a surgery!”

Thorin took a deep breath. “What did your parents call it?”

“A recalibration, nothing else.”

“Then that’s what I meant,” Thorin said. His tone made it obvious that he was losing his patience. “I am simply not familiar with the terms your parents used.”

“Oh, no, no. I’m sorry, it’s all right. I didn’t— I was a bit, er— Sorry,” Bilbo stammered. He pushed around a chunk of tomato and then set the bowl on his lap. “So, er, what is this oil for?”

“Loosening of the gearing. It will make the recalibration easier.”

“So you’ll be recalibrating my clock soon?”

The idea should have been exciting, maybe even bring Bilbo to tears with relief and gladness, but all it did was cause him discomfort. He didn’t understand why, but it did. Maybe it was because he wasn’t ready to have someone—a stranger, someone not his parents—touch his heart yet. Maybe it was because of something else he wasn’t ready to accept. He shoved the thought deep into his mind and shut it away.

If possible, Thorin looked even more uncomfortable than Bilbo. He brought the bowl up to his lips and took a long swig of the soup. It must burn as it went down his throat, but he made neither face nor gesture of discomfort when he drew away. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Bilbo noticed he had a lovely silver ring with what seemed to be a small clock in it, but then Thorin lowered his hand to grip the bowl away and Bilbo couldn’t see the ring any more.

“I haven’t been able to translate the text yet,” admitted Thorin.

“But there was a picture. Can’t you guess what you have to do more or less by looking at it?”

Thorin pinned him with a nonplussed stare. “You want me to guess what I should do where your heart is concerned? I do not believe that is a wise thing to do, Master Baggins.”

“Oh, no. Yes, you’re right.” Bilbo paused, glanced at Thorin, and looked away as he said, “But my parents never did anything special with it.”

“Sorry?”

“Well, I mean, they just recalibrated it.” Bilbo shrugged and served himself a bit more tomato soup. “All they ever did was make sure it was working the way any proper clock should be working. Then a pat on the head and off to bed. Nothing much to it, I would think.”

“Yes, you would think,” Thorin muttered. Louder, and before Bilbo could retort something they would both regret, he said, “Do you think I could have a go at it now, then?”

“Ye— No. No, I didn’t say that.”

“You sort of did.”

“No, no. I assure you, Thorin, that I didn’t. You misunderstood.”

“You said they recalibrated your heart just like they would recalibrate any other clock. I know my way around clocks. I can recalibrate clocks in my sleep, Master Baggins.” Thorin set down his bowl, having finished his serving and quite obviously not interested in a second helping. “If that was all there was to it, I could have done it the first time we met. But I am not sure, and your reluctance to let me near your heart has me reluctant to touch it in turn.”

“What do you want me to do? Apologise?” Bilbo scoffed. “I can’t help it. My heart’s a fragile thing. If I don’t take care of it, who will?”

“Your parents took care of it for a long time,” Thorin pointed out, “and now you want me to do it—but you won’t let me. So we have a problem.”

“We don’t have a _problem_.” Bilbo rolled his eyes. “I just need… time.”

“Time is the one thing you don’t have, if your assumptions are correct.”

“You’re not pushing me into this,” Bilbo snapped.

Thorin glared. “I’m not trying to push you. I’m telling you to make a damn choice. You want to get your heart fixed—”

“Recalibrated!”

“—but you won’t let anyone near it. That is fine. It is. It’s your choice to make. But if you don’t want anyone to get near you, stop making me try and understand how your heart works if you won’t even let me glimpse at it in the end! I despise wasting time.”

Thorin then took his bowl and stomped off to wash it. Bilbo’s stomach was too upset to let him finish his meal, so he set his own bowl down and rested his chin on both hands, elbows on his knees. His chest hurt, and he couldn’t ignore it this time around.

As much as it pained him to admit it, Thorin was right. Bilbo was contradicting himself at every turn. He wanted his clock to work properly but he wanted no one near him. He wanted to stay but he wanted to go. He wanted but he didn’t want. It was consuming him slowly, and it was made all the harder because he kept ignoring the war taking place within.

It was easier to turn a blind eye to the fact that he didn’t think he could go back to his former life after the previous month. It was easier to pretend he had no interest in feeling and experiencing things he knew he could never even entertain the thought of if he wanted to live. Really, it was easier numbing the pain until he felt none—until he felt nothing at all.

When Thorin came back from the room with the fountains, there was no trace in Bilbo’s face of the two single tears his eyes had betrayed. The dwarf put out the fire and left the room, leaving Bilbo for the darkness to consume him. Why wasn’t the gaslight on? It should be on, and Thorin shouldn’t have put out the fire. His nephews would have a cold meal now. The soup was getting cold. The room was getting cold.

Bilbo’s clock ticked on, the sound bouncing off the tall walls and reaching Bilbo’s ears a thousand times louder. Like his heart beating in his ears, a rush of blood pressing down on his head as he tried to keep it all in. Hush-hush. No one had to know. No one had to know. _Do not lose your temper_. Do not cry. Do not scream or yell or wail.

Slowly, very slowly, he stood up and rekindled the fire. It wasn’t as hard as the first time around because the coals were still hot, but the effort still left him feeling drained. Leaving a fire unattended wasn’t responsible, so instead of heading off to get some kip like he sorely wished he could do, Bilbo curled into a ball in one of the stone seats and popped his jacket’s collar to keep the chill of the room from his neck’s sensitive skin.

He almost fell asleep in several occasions, but in the end remained awake. When Fíli and Kíli finally waltzed into the room, talking in that odd language of theirs, they froze upon seeing him. Bilbo supposed they were trying to come up with an excuse to leave, so he made it easy for them and got up with a wan smile.

“Ah, boys. Good. I’ve been looking over this for you.” He gestured at the fire. “Food’s still warm. I think there was a bit of bread in the cupboard if you like your soup with that. I certainly do, but I am not partial to mossy bread, so I abstained. Maybe you won’t mind. I’ve seen you eat worse things.”

Bilbo had been walking towards them as he spoke, and now stopped in front of the brothers to give them each a soft squeeze on the arm.

“Enjoy. I’ll be in my room.”

“Bilbo,” Fíli said.

Bilbo stopped and turned around. “Yes?”

“Are you all right?”

Kíli added, “You look kind of…”

“Shaken?” Bilbo laughed. It sounded like dry leaves and torn paper. “Don’t worry.”

“Telling us not to worry doesn’t make the worry go away, Bilbo,” said Fíli.

“I’m aware of it,” he conceded. “But right now, I’m just glad you still care about me enough to worry at all.”

“What do you mean?” Kíli scowled. “Why would you think we don’t care?”

“Boys,” Bilbo raised a hand to stop the brothers from talking, “I’m half-asleep on my feet. All I want to do is have a nap, and that is what I’ll do now. Enjoy your food.”

He left before they could say anything else. His room was cold when he entered it, and he lit a fire in the small hearth there. It would take a while until the whole chamber felt warmer, so he took his cot from inside his rucksack and laid it out next to the fireplace.

Bilbo stared at the ceiling trying not to think for a long while. It was hard because his mind kept going back to things he would rather never think of again, but in the end he managed to quieten the voices in his head that asked him what the hell he was doing. His heart ached, and his clock’s gears creaked, and Bilbo fell asleep with the weight of his misery heavy on his chest.


	6. Chapter 6

Bilbo took up cooking when no one was around. After almost two weeks of being in Erebor, he had already worked out his dwarves’ timetables, and so he went to the dining room when he knew there would be no one there. It made things less difficult for Bilbo, whose clock had begun to act up with increasing regularity whenever he bumped into one of the other residents of the mountain. It was even worse when he crossed paths with Thorin, and he was afraid that his heart would jump out of his chest if the clockmaker came too close.

Thorin had shot him curious looks, then worried looks, and finally irritated looks. He didn’t understand why Bilbo ran from a room like it was on fire whenever he entered it. Bilbo wasn’t inclined to explain. It would prompt Thorin to demand have a look at his clock, and Bilbo was still quite firmly against the idea. He remembered Fíli’s touch around his prosthesis that first day, when his gears had sparked in his chest and smoke had come out of the clock face. The boy’s soft fingertips had felt warm, but they had made Bilbo shiver with fear and perhaps even aversion. He wasn’t willing to repeat the experience any time soon, even if he caught himself an alarming amount of times wondering if Thorin’s hands would feel less wrong tracing his clock hands, ghosting over the scarred flesh surrounding his mechanism, brushing against his heart.

Bilbo shook his head, putting an end to the daydreaming. No time for that. He finished the dish he was preparing—rice with beans and canned ham; the boys had gone to Dale a few days before and restocked the cupboard—and cleaned up. He was quick and efficient, automatic in his movements. He tended to act more like a machine when he was alone, or when he thought no one was watching. His father used to tell him that, and he would smile ruefully as he did. When he was having a bad day, he would blame it on the clock and beg Bilbo’s mother that they remove it.  The bad days had been scary because those had been the only times when his dad had talked about killing him like it was preferable to his depending on a clock to live.

Moving swiftly, he put out the fire and placed the pot directly atop the still-glowing embers. That would keep the food warm for longer, with the added advantage that he wouldn’t have to stay to look after the fire. He served himself a small helping—for hobbit standards anyway—and left to eat in his room. He was growing weary of the solitude, which was odd because he had been living alone in Bag End for almost a decade. But he guessed that it was effortless, growing used to company, and not so going back to the empty silence.

“—before?”

“Yes, I know it worked before, but now it doesn’t.”

Bilbo stopped in his tracks, spoon halfway to his mouth. That had sounded like Fíli and Kíli, but they had never used the rooms in this corridor, if he recalled well. Maybe Thorin had sent them to get something—and if their anxious tones were anything to go by, it sounded like they had broken said something.

“Maybe you should hit it,” Kíli’s voice said.

“Don’t be stupid,” his brother chided. There was the clinking noise of bits of metal being moved around. “You know better than to resort to that. Do you know who resorts to hitting a piece of machinery if it isn’t working all right? Elves.”

“Nah, I don’t think so. They probably sing to it or something like that.”

“Will you two focus?” said Thorin, and Bilbo almost dropped his plate. “We do not have all day.”

“Yes, yes,” Fíli muttered. There was some more clinking and the sound of a clasp snapping in place. “There. You think it’ll work?”

“It will,” Thorin told him, “if you did it right.”

“Why, Uncle, thank you for sounding so confident in my ability.”

“You’ve been gone for decades and I don’t trust Dís to have continued with your apprenticeship.”

“What does clock-making have to do with fixing a telegraph?”

“More than you think. Now try to get that message across to your mother,” Thorin said, and then added in a louder voice, “Master Baggins, is standing in the hallway appealing to you?”

Bilbo blanched because how had Thorin known? He had been so quiet. He wasn’t supposed to get caught. Golly, he hadn’t even meant to eavesdrop. It had just happened! Bilbo looked down at his hands and found the plate of rice. Right. If they asked, he could say he had been looking for them to tell them lunch was ready. Yes.

He stepped into the room, which was rather small in comparison to the others. The walls were covered in pipes and metal boxes with blinking lights. It felt like being inside an engine.

In a corner were the three dwarves. The brothers were crouched next to the telegraph Fíli had just been working on, and their uncle towered over them with his arms crossed. All of them had their eyes trained on Bilbo. He felt a bit like a mouse cornered by feral cats.

“Hi, Bilbo!” beamed Kíli. “Thank you for the stew you made yesterday.”

“Ah, well, er...” Bilbo gave a tentative smile, not sure where Kíli’s sunny disposition was coming from. He had grown used to gloomy thunderous Kíli in the past week. “Thank you for hunting the rabbit so I could make it.”

“It was no trouble.”

“Er, yes. So, er, what are you doing?”

“Trying to contact Mum,” said Fíli. “We need her to translate the passage from that book Uncle found.”

“So we want to know if she can leave the Iron Hills early,” finished Kíli.

“Oh. I see.”

The brothers grinned at him and Bilbo conjured up a small smile.  That seemed to please them; for Fíli turned from him and started transmitting the message, a rapid-fire succession of clicks, with Kíli dictating in a low murmur. Even if he had spoken louder, Bilbo still wouldn’t have understood anything because they had switched to dwarvish. Bilbo took a bite of his food, not really knowing what else was there for him to do.

It was around the moment when he was pulling the spoon out of his mouth that he noticed Thorin’s eyes were still on him. Bilbo aspirated a grain of rice and started coughing. His clock-heart whirred and tick-tock-tock-tocked. Thorin patted him on the back and Bilbo tried to shoot him a grateful look past the blurry vision and lack of oxygen. He wasn’t sure if he succeeded, but at least Thorin didn’t get the wrong impression and stop. The patting had now turned into a soft rubbing up and down between Bilbo’s shoulder blades. It was pleasant.

“You haven’t been showing your face much these past few days,” said Thorin.

“Y-yes, well,” Bilbo coughed one last time and straightened, tugging his shirt free from where it had snagged on his clock, “I didn’t feel terribly comfortable around you lot after what happened.”

Thorin frowned. “After what?”

“Oh, you know,” Bilbo mumbled, eyes on his plate. “That whole thing.”

Thorin’s hand stilled in his back for a moment, but then went back to its slow soothing movement. “Hmm, yes. I admit I was a bit incensed. This all is rather new to me, perhaps even more so than it is to you, and I dislike not being sure of what I’m doing.”

“I don’t think either of us knows what we’re doing.”

There was a twitch of the lips, and Bilbo was treated to a quick but honest smile from the clockmaker. He smiled back because it was somehow contagious, and continued to eat his rice. They stood like that as Fíli and Kíli sent the message, Bilbo shovelling spoonful after spoonful into his mouth and Thorin rubbing circles in his back.

When the brothers finished, they all went to the dining room to eat. Bilbo panicked for a moment, and tried to slip away because he was afraid of someone saying or doing something that would destroy their little truce. Nothing happened, in the end. Well, Kíli stuck a foot in the fire and danced around trying to douse the flames tickling his boots, but that was that. No harsh words were exchanged, and Thorin sat close enough for Bilbo to be self-conscious about the marginally-faster-than-normal ticking of his clock and how the hands strained to point west.

After lunch, the boys went to do the washing up and Bilbo accompanied Thorin to the library. Or at least he had thought they were going to the library, but they ended up travelling deeper into the mountain. It was no surprise when they reached the workshop’s gates. Thorin unlocked them and stepped in, motioning for Bilbo to do the same, and he followed the clockmaker without question.

Bilbo had only been to the workshop once, on that first day, and he remembered it as a cramped and dry place, with strange shadows dancing on the walls and half-finished clocks that were like corpses to him. In short, he didn’t remember it with fondness. He would rather stay in his room or walk along the secret ramparts he had stumbled into after slipping down a short steep tunnel of sorts a few days back. The brisk mountain wind had ruffled his hair and stung his cheeks, and he had felt like soaring for a moment. Staying in pretty carved stone caves for long periods of time with no sun or clouds or stars simply wasn’t for hobbits.

Thorin swept clean the surface of a table and on it set a book. Bilbo recognised it instantly.

“The ‘unconventional’ book?”

“Yes,” said Thorin. “I do not understand what it says, but I followed your… advice… and tried to guess what I should do from the drawings. From what I could muster, there seems to be a special oil concocted for people with mechanisms attached to their organs. The oil I mentioned last week.”

At Bilbo’s nod, he continued, “The herbs and essences used to prepare it are depicted in these pages, and that is how I managed to make some for you.”

Thorin walked to a nearby shelf and plucked a small flask from it. He handed it to Bilbo, their fingers brushing for a moment. Bilbo fought back the sudden urge his face had to set itself on fire.

The flask was silver and light, buffed to perfection, and someone had etched a nice swirling pattern on it. Bilbo hadn’t seen this type of engraving before; Erebor seemed to be covered with geometric and symmetric patterns, but this one was freer in nature. Bilbo wondered if it meant anything in particular, or if the person who had made it had simply had a mind-set which differed from that of their fellow dwarves.

“Thank you,” he said, more due to the flask than its contents. He had survived fifty years without this oil, so he doubted it would turn his world upside-down when he applied it.

Thorin inclined his head. "It would ease my mind to know that it is useful."

“Oh, well, I’ll, er— I’ll make sure to oil my gears with it before bed.” Bilbo smiled, raising the flask as if he were toasting. "And then I'll tell you how it went."

The reassurance appeased Thorin, who nodded and turned to a clock that was far from being complete. He didn't ask Bilbo to leave, which Bilbo took as invitation enough to linger. Still, he wouldn't stay much. The workshop wasn't any more pleasant than that first day, and his feet were itching to take him away.

Bilbo sat on a stool in a corner, quiet and unobtrusive, and Thorin pulled on his huge and heavily retrofitted goggles. He glanced at Bilbo, or at least Bilbo thought by the slight tilt of the clockmaker's head that he had, and then focused on his work.

“So… why do you need Dís if you already made the oil?”

“There’s more to the book than that,” said Thorin, screwing something to the back of the clock. “I’m hoping it will shed some light on the workings of your heart. Knowing the model I’m working with wouldn’t hurt either.”

Thorin stopped tinkering then and turned his goggled gaze upon Bilbo. Bilbo remained very still, staring into the huge polarised lenses, except for his hand that came up to rest atop his clock through his clothes’ fabric. There was a twitch in the corner of Thorin’s mouth, and his lips took a slight but very much noticeable downward curve. Bilbo felt bad for putting it there, but he couldn’t bring himself to move his hand away.

“All in due time,” he said, repeating his words from a few weeks ago.

Bilbo expected Thorin’s grimace of contempt, but he blinked several times in shock when the dwarf gave a curt nod and went back to work. He had been so sure Thorin would press the issue… But maybe his clockmaker was also trying to keep their truce for as long as possible.

After that, they lapsed into silence. Bilbo watched Thorin add parts and weld pieces together, replace cogs with a scoff and frown at various clock hands before setting aside his chosen ones. He was in his element, of that there was no doubt. It was clear that he could put together the clock whilst he slept, as he had said more than once, yet he offered the delicate mechanism in his hands his undivided attention. For some reason, it made Bilbo feel better.

There was something that looked like a monocle—or attempted to look like one—near Bilbo, and he was tempted to pick it up and put it on. His Tookish side pushing through his Baggins reservations and drowning him in curiosity, he knew. Would he see the world differently if he wore the monocle? Would he understand Thorin a bit better?

It had been some time since Bilbo had tried to familiarise himself with the way another's head worked. He hadn't seen the point, after his father's death, and his mother had encouraged his behaviour. Unnecessary stress that his heart could do without, she had stated. Unnecessary and unwanted.

Now Bilbo wondered if she had been wrong—if they both had. Practice makes perfect, and thus it was sensible to think that if he had socialised more and sheltered his heart less, this type of things would come easier to him.

Bilbo wrinkled his nose and stood up, careful not to disturb Thorin. He needn't have worried; the dwarf was engrossed and didn't notice anything. Bilbo's lips curved into a smile before he could stop them, but he didn't mind as much as he would have not a month ago.

He tiptoed out of the workshop and then made his way back to his room. The silver flask was secure in his pocket. He set it on the bedside table and looked down at it, hands on his hips. He felt silly. More specifically, he felt like he was having a staring contest with an inanimate object. An inanimate object that didn't even have inanimate eyes for him to stare at. And he didn't feel like he was doing that: He *was* doing that.

"Tonight," he told it, wagging a finger and feeling all the sillier. "And not a moment sooner."

The flask was cackling at him; he was sure of it.

*** * ***

The funny thing about time was that it was relative. Bilbo remembered the summer afternoons of his youth as nothing but a merry blur, and both of his parents' funerals as endless affairs. His clock's ticking had neither slowed nor accelerated if he wasn't nervous, but time stretched and squeezed itself to its liking, and there was no other option but to cope with it as best as possible.

Right now, it was as if time were running ahead and leaving Bilbo to catch his breath. Dís had taken only two hours to send a telegram with her reply, and Fíli had translated the message for Bilbo: OF COURSE STOP BE THERE IN THREE DAYS STOP. The brothers had run down to the workshop to tell their uncle, hopping and hooting. Bilbo had decided to slink back to his bedroom and have a bit of a lie down; he felt rather light-headed all of a sudden.

Dís’ arrival would mean that Thorin would finally learn from her whatever he deemed necessary to learn in order to fix Bilbo’s heart. With that out of the way, Bilbo would have to lie down in a worktable, his shirt popped open, and trust the clockmaker not to hurt the frailest part of him.

Could he do it? In all honesty, it would be quite ridiculous of him to have left his home and have gone through everything he had gone through only to chicken out at the very last moment. Still, getting over his fears was harder than he had thought. Maybe talking to Dís would help. They had become something akin to friends during Bilbo’s time in the _Ered Luin_ , and he liked to think that she would be able to chase away his worries. She was a no-nonsense sort of woman, grounded in spite of her being in charge of an airship, and that reassured him.

Not that Thorin wasn’t serious and down-to-earth himself, but the problem sort of stemmed from him, so Bilbo saw no point in talking to _him_ about it. Confrontations between them never lead to anything pretty, that much was abundantly clear by this point, and so Bilbo was loath to talk things over with the clockmaker. Oh, he knew he would have to at some point before the recalibration, but he was postponing for as long as he could.

In the end, it was simply easier to skirt around issues. It had always been. His clock-heart’s ticking was a bit odd, a bit too loud, whenever he turned a blind eye on whatever was worrying him, but it was better than its erratic tick-tocking when he fretted over things. As long as his emotions were stalled, he could be more or less fine. He preferred that to the hiccupping of the mechanism. He always had.

“Bilbo?”

He looked up from the book he had been reading cross-legged in the bed. Kíli was in the doorway, biting his lower lip to try and keep his grin from splitting his face in two. Bilbo grinned back, if a little tentatively. “Yes, Kíli?”

“I’m going hunting.”

“Oh.” Bilbo frowned. “What for? The cupboard’s still stocked.”

“Yes, I know, but we’ll make a special dinner today!” When Bilbo’s confused expression remained the same, Kíli expounded, “To celebrate! We’ll have a feast tonight to celebrate!”

“Oh, there really is nothing to celebrate,” Bilbo muttered.

“Yes, there is,” Kíli countered. “When Mum gets here, she’ll translate the text—she really is very good with old runes—and Uncle will finally fix your heart!”

“Recalibrate.”

“That.”

Bilbo pressed his lips together. He nodded, and Kíli beamed at him.

“Do you like duck?” asked the young dwarf.

“I, er— Yes? I mean, yes.”

“Oh, good. I’ll try to hunt some then. You must be sick of eating rabbit, eh?”

“It’s not like we’ve been eating just rabbit for the past two weeks,” Bilbo pointed out. They had eaten rabbit during the first week practically all the time, that much was true, but then the boys had gone to Dale—on foot!—and bought some goods that allowed Bilbo to prepare more varied meals. So, all in all, he wasn’t as sick of rabbit as he would be if they hadn’t restocked the cupboard. “But yes, duck sounds lovely.”

“I’ll do my best then!” Kíli said, and with that he went.

Bilbo stared at the door until his cuckoo trilled, signalling the beginning of another hour. He blinked and sighed, looking down at the book in his lap. _Every Inventor Needs a Tool Belt: How To Always Be Prepared In Case Inspiration Strikes at the Unlikeliest of Times (Special Edition)._ Bilbo’s mother had had the abridged version and she had always griped about never having been able to get her hands on the much renowned special edition. So far, it hadn’t proved a very interesting read. She would have found it enthralling.

He slid the book under his pillow and stood up. It would be evening soon. He would start cooking now, but if Kíli had just gone out hunting, then he would probably have to wait until well past sundown to get around making dinner. Thus deprived of his favourite pastime, he set off to meander the tall stone halls.

 _Erebor_ had never stopped looking sad to him. The gaslight illuminated its corridors with a warm flickering light, but it also made the abandoned kingdom look eerie and desolate. Bilbo didn’t enjoy walking about on his own very much, but he had been doing a lot this past week. Besides, and against his better judgement, he was a curious creature. Blame it on his Took blood, but he was. That was a personality trait his parents had never been able to weed out of him, no matter of detrimental to his health.

And _Erebor_ made him feverish with curiosity.

An ancient kingdom, out of sight and out of mind, and used as the very big workshop of a lonely clockmaker. Bilbo was amazed Thorin hadn’t gone mad staying holed up in such immensity all by himself for who-knows-how-long. No starts, no dew, no clouds, no flowers, no fresh air. Bilbo would have lost his mind with only the ticking of his clock for company. He almost had, back in Bag End.

Bilbo was surprised to discover that his feet had carried him to the workshop. He hadn’t noticed he had been going deeper into the mountain. Uncertain, he rested his hand on the stone-and-metal double gates. They were closed, the intricate and strange locking mechanism in place, and Bilbo couldn’t even begin to decipher how to unlock it. Did he want to unlock it? Did he want to go inside?

He was about to turn away when something caught his eye. On the side, almost completely hidden behind one huge hinge, was a square silver button. A doorbell? He wasn’t sure since it looked different from his own doorbell, wood-and-brass and round and unobtrusive. Before he could think about it better, he pushed the button.

There was a loud noise inside the workshop, like a thousand ravens cawing, and Bilbo almost jumped out of his skin. Inside the workshop, Thorin seemed to have been startled as well; for Bilbo heard the distinct sound of many bits and bobs falling to the ground, as well as the dwarf spitting out words in his native tongue. Whatever he was saying, Bilbo was sure it wasn’t very flattering.

With a whirr and a hiss, the locking mechanism slid and twisted until the doors opened. Bilbo stepped inside, coming to a halt when he found Thorin crouched not too far away, his goggles still on, picking up the things he had dropped. They looked like an assortment of clock parts. Of course. Clock parts were the only things you would ever find down here.

“Oh, dear. I’m sorry, Thorin,” Bilbo stammered, rushing to help. “Here, let me.”

“It’s fine, Bilbo.”

“No, please, let me—”

“I said it’s _fine_ , Bilbo.”

Bilbo stilled, then straightened up with a huff. “Well, pardon me for trying to lend a hand.”

“You wouldn’t have to lend a hand if you hadn’t rung.”

“Oh, so it’s my fault! Should I have waited until you decided to come out of your lair then? Or should I have knocked instead? Shouted your name, perhaps? Tell me, Thorin—with all the incessant ticking and tocking and clicking going on in here, would you have even heard?”

“I had already heard _you_ ,” growled Thorin, “before you rang the doorbell.”

“Heard _me_?”

Thorin stood up, his arms full of metal bits, and dumped them all in the nearest table. Maybe it was only Bilbo’s imagination, but the workshop looked a lot messier than it had that morning. He wondered if Thorin had been looking for something or if he had had a frustrated outburst and wrecked his workplace. If it was the latter, then Bilbo would certainly cluck his tongue in disapproval at the dwarf.

“Yes, you. Your clock. It ticks.”

Bilbo pulled himself back into the conversation and shot Thorin a curious look. “And you can hear it? All the way from here? In spite of all the other ticking?”

“Yes,” said Thorin, and he sounded like he had just committed to some dreadful and embarrassing crime. “How do you think I heard you standing outside the telegraph room this morning?”

“I— Well, I’d thought you, er— Hm.”

“Hm,” Thorin repeated, his tone nonchalant.

The dwarf turned from Bilbo and tugged his goggles off. He hung them on a grandfather clock and rubbed at his eyes, which probably hurt from straining his eyesight all day. He sighed and pulled his hair free of its ponytail, letting it cascade down his broad back in deep dark coils streaked with silver.

For the first time ever, Bilbo was very aware of the fact that Thorin was handsome. He didn’t even need to see his face to conjure up the thought because seeing his face would change nothing. Thorin was handsome, in a brooding and annoying sort of way, but still very much handsome. If Bilbo looked into his deep blue eyes now, he might even consider calling him beautiful. A vision. As perfect as the clocks he put together, welding and carving and cutting and filing.

And then Thorin turned around and he—he had _deep red suction marks_ around his eyes from having had his goggles on for so long. Bilbo tried to keep a straight face, but he burst out laughing the moment he registered just how silly Thorin looked with those angry crimson grooves in his face while sporting his most serious expression.

“What?” Thorin snapped.

Bilbo gasped for air, managed to squeak out something that sounded like an attempt at Westron, and then dissolved into hysterical giggling again. Thorin did not appreciate it, instead frowning and growing even more serious, which made Bilbo fall on his bum and cackle like his life depended on it.

“Have you finally gone mad, hobbit?” the dwarf asked.

Bilbo clutched his stomach. It was so funny, it hurt. Thorin didn’t understand what was so hilarious, of course, since the source of Bilbo’s amusement was very much on his face. Bilbo wiped his eyes, which were threatening to spill sweet tears wrought from laughter. He was still giggling, but the shocked delight had passed and now Bilbo’s amusement had blunted its edges, and so he regained his ability to speak.

“Your face,” he said simply.

Thorin raised a hand to feel his cheeks, and his fingertips brushed along the lower line of his temporary goggles-shaped tattoo. He must have felt it because he gave a soft groan, rubbing both hands against his face in earnest. Bilbo’s clock-heart felt light, like a crick in the neck that had suddenly melted away.

“I always forget,” Thorin mumbled.

“Understandable, since you live alone and have no one around to point it out.” Bilbo’s mouth twitched, and then he sniggered. “Or laugh at it.”

“It isn’t that funny.”

“Oh, believe me, it is.”

Thorin made a noise at the back of his throat and crossed his arms. He was uncomfortable. Bilbo schooled his expression, deciding that he had tormented the poor dwarf enough for the time being, and got up. He patted the lint off his buttocks and flashed a smile at Thorin, who was still sticking to his serious expression despite the fact that he looked more ridiculous than imposing with his goggles stamped on his face.

“So, Dís is coming in three days,” said Bilbo.

A shadow crossed Thorin’s face, but it was gone in a second. “Yes.”

“She’ll translate the ‘unconventional’ book?”

“Yes.”

“And then…” Bilbo trailed off. He couldn’t say it. Lamely, he repeated, “And then.”

Thorin nodded. “And then, yes.”

“Right. Good. Jolly good.” Bilbo bounced on the balls of his feet for a moment, clasping his hands behind his back. He wished they could go back to a minute ago when he was sprawled on the floor laughing his head off. “I, er, will try to… stay calm and… not give you a hard, er, time. Yes?”

Thorin raised an eyebrow. “Is that a question?”

“It’s a polite offer,” sniped Bilbo, a bit more biting than he meant, “to tell me if there’s anything more you’d need from me in order to do your job well.”

Thorin’s eyes turned hard. “There is not.”

“All right. Fine.”

“Fine.”

“Good.”

“Yes.”

They held each other’s gazes. Bilbo felt their little truce writhe and die a slow agonising death with each second that passed them by. He wondered if trying to save it would be in vain. He had very much liked being on speaking terms with them all again. His clock seemed to agree, the hands fighting a valiant fight to point east.

Bilbo’s hands reached up and petted his mechanism. Thorin’s eyes fell to his chest instantly, his sharp clear eyes seemingly wanting to burn through the fabric so they could catch a glimpse of the heart underneath. Bilbo had forgotten how interested Thorin was in having a look at his clock. But when it had made him dizzy with fear before, now it made his skin itch and feel like his clothes were too tight all of a sudden. He didn’t know if he liked the sensation.

He cleared his throat, his hand falling away. “I’ll see you at dinner then?”

Thorin’s intense stare lingered on his chest for a few more seconds which seemed like hours to Bilbo—the relativity of time really managed to unnerve him sometimes. Then he looked up, locking gazes with him. He looked hungry, and Bilbo didn’t know if it was because he had mentioned dinner or due to something else entirely.

“Yes,” Thorin said.


	7. Chapter 7

Captain Dís arrived two days later, which meant she was a day early. She had landed at the foot of the mountain in what Bilbo could only describe as an iron wheelbarrow with bat wings attached to three large balloons. No one had thought it odd, but Thorin had scoffed at the craftsmanship and complained about how rudimentary the dwarves from the Iron Hills were. He took their unrefined flying contraption as some sort of personal affront.

Fíli and Kíli pulled it apart and put it back together while the Captain and Thorin spoke in rapid-fire dwarvish. They hadn’t bothered with greetings of any kind, instead going straight to growling and spitting in each other’s faces—though not literally—until Bilbo cleared his throat. He didn’t like being ignored, and he was sure that he had heard his name being spoken at least four times during their chat. Captain Dís blinked at him as if she had noticed he was there only just then.

“Master Hobbit,” she said. Her lips bloomed into a smile. “Bilbo. It’s good to see you, though I do wish my brother had taken better care of your heart. And I wish even more that you had _let him_ do so.”

“Oh, but my heart’s fine, Captain,” Bilbo said with no conviction at all. “Quite fine.”

“That is not what I hear. Thorin’s telegram was rather urgent.”

“I’m fine,” Bilbo insisted.

“You are not. You were not fine before you left the _Ered Luin_ and I dare say you are even worse now.” She took Bilbo in from the tips of his woolly toes to the highest curl on his head. Then she told her brother, “Bring me to the book you mentioned, Thorin. I would like to have a look at the manuscript as soon as possible. Did you manage to translate anything at all?”

“Only a small part,” Thorin said.

The siblings began their trek up the mountain, switching back to their mother tongue as they did. Bilbo stood for a moment, torn between following and staying behind to make sure Fíli and Kíli didn’t damage the flying wheelbarrow beyond repair. In the end, he threw up his hands and trotted after Thorin and the Captain. They seemed to be arguing over something, Captain Dís making a chopping motion with her hands as if she were aggressively emphasising something. Thorin was no better, biting out the same odd guttural word over and over as if he were chanting.

It took a couple of minutes, but Bilbo realised that they were quarrelling over the translation of a word. Bilbo rolled his eyes and continued to walk behind them, not really paying attention to their incomprehensible conversation. He had learnt from Fíli that non-dwarves were not allowed to learn their language since it was considered sacred, and even though Bilbo had never shown an interest in knowing it, he took care not to stand too close when they spoke it. He thought it was only polite.

Once they were back inside the cavernous kingdom, though not without Bilbo having had to stop to regain his breath every ten minutes and the siblings waiting for him, Captain Dís and Thorin left for the workshop immediately. The dwarves only spared him a glance, offering him to join them. Bilbo knew he would be of no help, however, and perhaps even a hindrance. He declined with all the graciousness any proper hobbit had and went to his room.

Before Bilbo could reach the familiar corridor where his bedroom was, as well as Fíli and Kíli’s, he walked past the telegraph chamber. He slowed down and then stopped. A thought had been forming and then rattling at the very back of his mind ever since he had found out about the communications machine. It was neither a good nor a bad thought, but it might be dangerous or foolish, which was why Bilbo hadn’t done anything thus far.

He missed the Shire. He missed Bag End and everything in it. He missed his neighbours and his neighbours’ neighbours, and the merchants of Hobbiton’s market, and the _Green Dragon_ ’s bartender. He missed the place he had always called home. Surely no one would say anything if he sent a little telegram? To Holman, enquiring after the state of his garden (and if anyone had tried to break into his lovely smial yet). Just a short telegram. Innocuous.

Squaring his shoulders, he pushed the stone door open and stepped into the room. They hadn’t used it again after Dís had answered their message, and a thin layer of dust had already settled on every surface. Bilbo wondered where, exactly, came the dust from, but he didn’t dwell much on it, no matter how intriguing. He had a telegram to send.

Like most hobbits, he didn’t know much about machines and technology—but unlike hobbits, he knew enough to handle himself well with a piece of machinery. He poked about the telegraph. It was different than the one he was used to. The only one he had ever used was an old but luscious thing, a gift to the town of Bree from a travelling group of elves. It had been lovely and efficient, but radically different from the telegraph he was facing now.

He found a slip of paper and a quill, and he sat down on the floor to write his telegram. HOW ARE MY PLANTS STOP AM DOING FINE STOP WILL RETURN SOON STOP. Bilbo nibbled on the quill. Oh, there were so many things he wanted to mention! Travelling on an airship, befriending dwarves, seeing sights never seen before by a hobbit! Meeting Northmen and riding a pony! Coming face to face with a legendary clockmaker and befriending him—sort of. He thought they could be considered something like friends, even if they hadn’t spent much time together during Bilbo’s stay.

There had been the dinners, of course, and the times when Thorin walked Bilbo to his room and they lingered conversing at the doorway. One time, they had been snapped out of their quiet chatting by Bilbo’s cuckooing. He had squawked and gripped his chest, embarrassed, but Thorin had just smiled and told him his clock made a lovely sound.

Bilbo had never been told that before in his life, that was for sure. He had retired to his room after that, flustered to the point of stuttering, and let the raucous ticking of his clock drown out every other sound for a while. It had stung, but it had been a pain worth feeling. Then he had caught himself thinking that and begun to panic, and his fear had brought hot tears to his eyes.

His clock hands pointed to the door all throughout his little meltdown, as if they had hoped that Thorin would burst into the room if they insisted enough. His heart had beat in agreement. In the end, Bilbo had fallen asleep alone and curled up on his side.

That episode was an unsettling one indeed. Not because of his heart’s acting up. Sadly, Bilbo had grown used to it doing freakish stuff. They didn’t worry him any more, even though they should. No, that episode had been unsettling because Bilbo had realised that he was a bit infatuated with the clockmaker. Which was ridiculous because they didn’t know each other that well. Hobbits began cultivating their love early on, progressing from playmates to best friends, to sweethearts until, finally, they wed.

Bilbo had never had anyone like that. He had never clicked with anyone, which suited him and his frail little heart just fine. And now that his heart was at its frailest, Bilbo had gone and developed some sort of bizarre crush on someone with a beard and coarse manners. Never mind the purring voice and eyes like his cuckoo bird’s aquamarines: The dwarf was still rather uncivil in some aspects.

He was so patient, though. Bilbo had been afraid that Thorin might pin him down—he was big enough to do it without trouble—and handle Bilbo’s heart without his consent. Worst of all, Bilbo had been terrified of Thorin treating his heart like an odd thing, a curiosity, a hiccup of Nature that needed to be studied and then thrown aside like a toy that had been interesting for a fleeting moment and then lost its appeal.

Bilbo gripped his chest, feeling a wave of pain run through him. The first time he had experienced it, Old Took had passed away during the night. _Heartbreak_ , his parents had told him, one rubbing circles in his back while the other oiled his gears. _This is heartbreak. You can only feel it so many times before it kills you. This is why you must not fall in love._

Well. Bilbo wasn’t _in love_ yet, and he didn’t plan on reaching that stage. He had come to Thorin so he may live, not to get (unwittingly) killed by the dwarf.

“Bilbo?”

Kíli and Fíli were at the door, peering at him with confused expressions. Bilbo smiled at them, folding the slip of paper in his hands. He felt like he had been caught doing something inappropriate, which wasn’t the case, but he still couldn’t fight back the sheepish blush from spreading over his cheeks.

“Hello, boys.”

“Hi.”

“What are you doing?” asked Fíli.

“Oh, nothing important.” Bilbo waved a hand. “I was thinking maybe I should contact my relatives. Let them know how I’m faring. I’ve been gone for the better part of two months, you know? No hobbit disappears for so long. No _respectable_ hobbit, that is.”

“And you’re respectable?” asked Kíli.

“Very much so.”

“Oh. We’d thought—” Kíli was silenced by an elbow to the ribs.

Bilbo huffed a laugh. “You can tell me. I won’t get mad.”

“It’s nothing,” Fíli assured him, or tried to; Bilbo was not assured in the least. The blonde seemed to notice since he hurried to say, “Do you need help with the telegraph?”

“Thank you, but no. I’ve used telegraphs before.”

“ _Dwarven_ -made ones? No telegraphs are like ours,” Fíli said, and he sounded terribly proud and smug. “I don’t think you’ll be able to get it to work without some _dwarven_ help.”

Kíli plopped next to Bilbo. Fíli soon followed, cracking his knuckles. After some wheedling, they managed to get him to share the telegram he had been thinking of sending, and they spent a good deal of time talking about plants and gardeners and unpleasant relatives who wanted to steal your things before the boys finally got down to business.

It took Fíli less than a minute to send the telegram, and Bilbo felt a rush of relieved hysteria, two thoughts converging in his mind: ‘You already sent it so there’s no going back’ and ‘I hope to hear good news from my beloved Shire soon!’. He and the brothers moved to their room after that. Bilbo hadn’t been to their chambers much since it was too messy and had pointy weapons scattered all over, and he was afraid of stepping on something sharp, but the boys made him feel very comfortable when he acquiesced and dropped by their room.

There were two beds, but Fíli and Kíli had pushed them together because they had been sleeping next to each other since Kíli’s birth. Not being within reach felt odd to them, and they stayed awake for hours if their brother wasn’t there. Bilbo could relate, in a way. There were days—wretched days, miserable days—when his clock’s sound was distinctively low, a shy and brittle ticking, and Bilbo couldn’t fall asleep. Other days, however, the ticking was so loud that if deafened him and made his teeth chatter.

Kíli upturned a leather sack, and many objects fell out of it and straight into Bilbo lap. He gave a squeak of terror, covering his chest in case anything accidentally hit him there. Nothing so terrible happened, thank goodness, but his cuckoo jumped out of his chest and trilled once to reflect his sudden fright.

“Mum brought us this from the Iron Hills!” Kíli boasted.

“There are some things here for you,” added Fíli. He was looking at Bilbo with his golden brows furrowed. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, yes. Just— Kíli took me by surprise.” Bilbo glared at the brunet. “What were you thinking? You could have hurt me if any of these things had hit my clock. Some of these look quite heavy!”

“Sorry, Bilbo,” Kíli mumbled. “I forgot.”

“You _forgot_ you shouldn’t be emptying travel bags on someone’s head?”

“About the— I forgot about your clock,” said Kíli. “I’m— We aren’t so aware of it. You think about it all the time, but we don’t.”

“Well, you should.”

“But it’s just a clock.”

“Kíli,” warned Fíli.

“ ‘Just a clock’!” Bilbo scoffed.

“Well, it’s true!”

“No, it is not. It is _not_ just a clock!” exclaimed Bilbo. He was tired of people either treating his clock-heart like an anomaly or like it didn’t require any sort of special treatment at all. It deserved to be treated with respect and not a small amount of care, and it also deserved to be looked upon with neither awe nor disgust. It deserved to be treated like any goddamn heart was treated! “This is a part of me, Kíli. It’s a piece of my heart, and it should be treated accordingly.”

“Define ‘accordingly’.”

“Don’t get all patronising with me now, boy.”

“Don’t call me ‘boy’,” Kíli snapped. “I’m older than you.”

“Numbers!” Bilbo huffed. “They don’t mean anything.”

“All right, stop,” Fíli cut in, raising his hands. “Kíli, apologise to Bilbo.”

“Why—”

“Because what you did and said was horrible. You could have broken his heart and you justified it with not remembering you could have done that.” Fiíl levelled Kíli with a stern look that reminded Bilbo of the Captain. “Mum taught you better than this.”

Kíli clenched his hands at his sides, but told Bilbo, “I’m sorry.”

It sounded strangely genuine, despite the obvious reluctance. Bilbo was still angry at Kíli, of course, since apologies didn’t offer a magical solution to anything, but it was something. He nodded and started organising the items that had scattered round his crossed legs. Small statues, tools, books, little pouches, and many other things.

Kíli sat down further away than usual, and handed Bilbo a small flat metal box. Bilbo took it with a thanks, but he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do with it. Hand it to Fíli? There was an engraving in the box, but it was in dwarvish and so Bilbo had no idea what it said. Fíli plucked the box from his hands and cleared his throat.

“It’s a tool kit. Portable one.”

“Oh. Er, all right.”

Fíli handed it back. “For you.”

Bilbo didn’t move to take it. “What? Why would I need a tool kit?”

“You have a clock in your chest, don’t you?” Fíli shook the tool kit and the items inside clinked. “This will help you take better care of it. Uncle Thorin or Mum will teach your how to use it.”

“Isn’t your uncle supposed to make sure my heart’s in tiptop shape?”

“Yes, but you should learn to take care of it anyway, right?” said Kíli. Bilbo looked at him and the young dwarf didn’t break eye contact, though it was obvious that he wanted to. “It’s _your_ heart, after all.”

“I guess you have a point,” sighed Bilbo.

He took the tool kit. It felt a lot heavier, all of a sudden. He imagined having to carry it with him everywhere and he almost burst into tears. He didn’t want to have to worry about his heart like this. He wanted a normal heart, not a flawed one.

Still, this was what he had and he would try and make the best of it. He turned the small box around and found a sort of clip at the back, surely for hooking it on a belt. Bilbo didn’t wear belts. His belly and breeches made sure to keep his trousers in place. It looked like he would have to start using one, however, if that was what was required to carry the wretched kit around.

He popped it open and found several odd-looking sticks, some curvy and others pointy, but what caught his attention was the small flask resting to the far right. He picked it up and shook it next to his ear, but there was no liquid sound.

“It’s empty,” Fíli said.

“You’re supposed to fill it up with your preferred oil,” explained Kíli.

Bilbo remembered Thorin’s silver flask. He had used the oil two times since he’d been given it, and he had been reluctant to admit that it had done him a power of good. There was something about it that soothed his mechanism like no other lubricant had ever managed. It had given his clock a lustrous appearance as well, as if Bilbo had taken the time to brush it and polish it—something he did once every a couple of months.

The flask was a little bigger than the one in the tool kit, but it should fit with a little nudging. Bilbo set the plain metal flask back into its slot, trying the give of the plush walls encasing it, and decided that he would shuck it and replace it with his lovely silver flask with swirling patterns the moment he got to his room.

“I’m going to need a belt.”

“There should be one lying about,” said Fíli.

“And working gloves, too,” said Kíli.

“I won’t be needing those,” Bilbo protested. “My heart won’t harm me.”

“It might,” countered Fíli. “Maybe the gears will pinch your fingers or a hand will prick your flesh. Better be safe than sorry, don’t you think?”

He had a point. Even if Thorin fixed— _recalibrated_ —his heart, no one could be sure that it wouldn’t go haywire in the future. The working gloves still seemed a tad excessive, however. Bilbo remembered the ones Thorin used. They were big and thick, made of leather and with bits of chainmail here and there for extra protection.

Bilbo had even put one on, once, when Thorin hadn’t been looking. It had been unpleasant, to feel half of his arms trapped in that rigid and hot structure. His palm had grown sweaty after a second, and he had pulled his arm free before the discomfort morphed into panic.

Still, safety came first. His parents had taught him to look after himself, and that was what he would do. Awkward gloves or not.

Bilbo sighed and stood up. “So where would these gloves and belt be lying about, then?”

*** * ***

Dinner that night was devoid of laughter. Things between Bilbo and Kíli were still a bit tense, and they had discovered that the ‘unconventional’ book’s runes were so ancient that even Captain Dís had a hard time understanding them. It would take her longer than anticipated to translate the passage, a news Thorin hadn’t taken very well.

“He wants to get it done,” she had told Bilbo, helping him serve dinner.

“Get what done?”

“The recalibrating. He’s afraid of what might happen if he doesn’t do it soon.”

“Oh. Well, it’s fine, really. I don’t feel, er, sick.”

“It might sneak up on you.”

‘It’ being something much darker than what Bilbo had tried to imply. Bilbo had tasted the onion soup for the twelfth time in five minutes then. He had known it was good, but he had kept looking for things that might distract him from the Captain’s piercing stare. It was so much like her brother’s that it had made Bilbo feel a bit put out.

“Perhaps,” he had said.

They didn’t talk after that. No one did. Thorin looked positively murderous, and he kept throwing glares in Bilbo’s direction. Fíli had assured him that it was just the way he looked when he was worried, but it still left Bilbo feeling uncomfortable and wishing he could excuse himself for the night. Imagine! A hobbit willing to give up dinner if only to avoid the scalding glare of his clockmaker.

When he finished his serving, he told Fíli and Kíli to do the washing-up and left. He saw their furrowed brows and knew they were wondering why he hadn’t had a second helping; he didn’t think they were entitled to an explanation, so he just hurried off to his room. His clock was bothering him and using Thorin’s ointment sounded like a marvellous idea.

Before locking himself up in his bedroom, he stopped by the telegraph room to see if they had got an answer. There was nothing, and Bilbo tried not to feel too disappointed. The fact that Captain Dís had answered within a few hours didn’t mean everyone would. Besides, the Shire was further away from the Lonely Mountain that the Iron Hills. Maybe that meant the message took longer to arrive.

He went to his bedroom and tugged his cravat off, looking around for the flask. The last time he had used it, he had left it in his rucksack. It took a little rummaging, but he found it amongst his things. Bilbo tossed it onto the bed and shed his jacket and waistcoat in one fluid motion. Then he began unbuttoning his shirt. He was a little upset over finding out that the translation of the old dwarven text would take longer than they assumed, and not hearing back from his hometown wasn’t very nice either, so his fingers shook a little. Only a little, but it made getting his shirt off all the harder.

He had just managed to get the lowest button out of its buttonhole when Thorin walked in.

“Bilbo, were you…”

The clockmaker’s voice trailed off, his worried expression melting into one of confusion until his gaze dropped to Bilbo’s open shirt. It was the first time Thorin saw the expanse of his torso, mostly hairless and freckled. And, of course, with a gleaming gold clock grafted to his heart, resting between the pectorals and only a little ways to the left.

Bilbo screamed a high-pitched scream that made Thorin wince and move to cover his ears. Bilbo stumbled back, his mind telling him that climbing into bed and throwing pillows at the dwarf until he left was a sound strategy. He did no such thing, instead tugging at the fabric of his shirt to cover his clock better.

“Dear me, Thorin, what are you _doing_?” Bilbo shrieked. “Have you never heard of knocking?”

“Oh, Mahal. Bilbo, I’m sorry.” Thorin slapped a hand across his eyes and half-turned away from Bilbo. His shoulder slammed against the door, and the impact made it close with a loud _ka-clack_. “Sorry, I thought—”

“Well, you thought wrong, didn’t you?”

“The door was open,” Thorin protested, but it was a weak protest. His hand that was free fumbled for the doorknob; the other one was still covering the upper half of his face. He looked redder than normal.

“No, it wasn’t,” Bilbo said, but he wasn’t so sure. Had he closed it? “I never leave it open.”

“Well, this once, you did.” Thorin opened the door and gave a little bow. “I truly am sorry for intruding. I didn’t mean to infringe upon your privacy.”

He turned to leave. An iron hand closed around Bilbo and squeezed. There was something between them that was about to die. Bilbo could feel it, just like he had felt some days ago that moment between them in the workshop end. The irrational fear that had gripped him squeezed harder still.

Bilbo’s clock did something very stupid then: Its hands snapped to the 12 and his cuckoo bird jumped out of his chest, trilling and trilling and trilling. Thorin stopped but didn’t turn. Bilbo gave a little gasp of pain, but Thorin still didn’t turn. He clenched his fists and almost vibrated with the need to turn, but he didn’t. Bilbo appreciated the gesture. It gave him time to calm down.

With a voice softer than he had intended, he said, “Thorin.”

“Yes?”

“Don’t— Don’t leave, all right? Wait for a bit. I have something to show you.”

Thorin didn’t say anything, but Bilbo could hear his breath hitching. Other than that, the only sound was that of clock-heart, which wasn’t ticking away but rather rattling away very quietly. The cuckoo bird had hidden inside its little chamber again.

Bilbo rubbed his chest. His knees felt like marmalade, so he sat on the bed. It dipped under his weight, but he was so light-headed that he almost fell on his back. He caught himself on time, however, and cleared his throat nervously. Thorin’s head twitched a little ways to the side, allowing Bilbo to see just the tip of his straight nose and long eyelashes.

“All right.” Bilbo took a deep breath and exhaled. “All right, come here.”

“Are you sure?” Thorin asked.

“As sure as I can be.”

“You said you would show me in due time,” Thorin reminded him, still not turning. “I am loath to think you are showing me only because I walked in on you—”

“Thorin,” Bilbo interrupted. “It’s time.”

“If you’re sure?”

“Yes, I am. Trust me on this.” Bilbo said, and then smiled. “I’m the one with a clock as a part of his anatomy.”

Thorin huffed, but it was an amused huff. Bilbo could tell. At his encouragement, Thorin finally let the door close again and approached Bilbo. He was cautious, giving short and slow steps, giving Bilbo plenty of time to change his mind. Bilbo didn’t. He fiddled with the rim of his shirt instead, feeling along the buttonholes and keeping his clock covered.

When Thorin reached him, he stopped close enough that their knees brushed together. Bilbo looked up at him, for the first time feeling the beating of his heart drown out the mechanism of his clock. Dark locks cascaded down Thorin’s head and around his shoulders, lines of silver woven in-between the ink-black. A pair of aquamarine eyes looked down at him, hooded and serene.

“It’s not— It doesn’t look very… nice.” Bilbo broke eye contact, looking at anywhere but at Thorin. He didn’t feel quite the same way he had been feeling up until then, all of a sudden. “The skin around it is a bit, er— Well, I mean, I was just a babe when they attached it so the scars aren’t very noticeable, but— Oh, bother.”

Thorin moved, slow and careful, and rested one hand atop Bilbo’s, rough to the touch but gentle in its ways. It was _so close_. So close to Bilbo’s heart. That was all Bilbo could think about, his mind thrown into a mindless loop. The other hand came to rest on his shoulder. Thorin had a small smile on his face, but it was so soft and bright that it reminded Bilbo of a warm hearth in winter. Some of the tension drained from him.

Bilbo took another deep breath, smiled back to the best of his ability, and pushed his shirt aside. Thorin gave a soft gasp. He stroked Bilbo’s hand, an absentminded gesture. His eyes were fixed on Bilbo’s clock and in his face was a look of utter wonderment.

“It’s— It looks smaller than I thought.”

Bilbo shifted. Was that good or bad? “It isn’t very imposing, no.”

“It’s lovely,” Thorin said, reaching up with a hand and then hesitating. “May I?”

Bilbo smiled again. He wanted to cry with relief. “Yes.”

Thorin didn’t really touch his heart. His fingers ghosted over it instead, following the inverted V of the roof and the curve of the clock face. Hovering over the hands—Thorin frowned a little when he noticed they were stating it was midnight—and admiring the pattern of vines and leaves.

Bilbo shuddered at first, but it wasn’t out of disgust or dread. It was pleasant in a familiar way, like when his parents had pressed kisses to his clock when he was feeling down or Captain Dís and her sons had taken his unconventional prosthesis in stride.

“You have a beautiful heart, Bilbo Baggins,” Thorin murmured.

“Only if by ‘beautiful’ you mean ‘weak and broken’.”

“I do not.” Thorin tore his gaze eyes from Bilbo’s clock and locked gazes with him. He looked regal and solemn, as if he were decreeing something. “Your heart is beautiful, and that is all there is to say on the matter. This—” He ran his index finger down the length of Bilbo’s gold clock and then trailed up a pale scar with the utmost care, “—is all beautiful. I don’t care what others have led you to believe, or what you have led yourself to believe. The only adjective that could ever be used to describe your heart is this: ‘Beautiful’—and perhaps maybe ‘golden’.”

Bilbo rested his hands atop Thorin’s, and the dwarf stroked his clock with such tenderness that Bilbo couldn’t remember how lungs were supposed to work for a moment. He felt his lips curl into a gentle smile, and he leant into Thorin, shyly pressing his forehead against the dwarf’s abdomen. He smelled of metal and leather, and it was a scent that right now felt a lot more like home than his parents’ flowerbed.

Thorin stroked his hair, saying something in his native tongue. Bilbo gave a tiny nod; even if he hadn’t understood, Thorin’s tone had been clear enough. And when the tears came, he knew they were born from gladness and gladness alone.


	8. Chapter 8

Thorin stayed. After Bilbo stopped sniffling into his shirt, the clockmaker tucked him in and sat in an armchair near the fireplace. Bilbo rolled onto his side to get a better look at his profile, and openly stared after the dwarf did nothing to indicate that the scrutiny made him uncomfortable.

The firelight made Thorin’s skin and eyes look like embers. He was a warm presence in the room, warmer than the fire in the hearth. Bilbo wanted to have him sit next to him on the bed so he could run his fingers along the dark mane. He imagined the beads at the end of his braids wouldn’t be cold. They would have some of Thorin’s body heat clinging to their silvery surface. It would be lovely to hold them between thumb and index finger.

Bilbo had expected Thorin to poke around his clock some more, but he had actually gone no further than what he had already done. In fact, he had looked quite guilty about the touches he had indulged in. He hadn’t apologised, not with words, but the way he had buttoned up Bilbo’s shirt, keeping his eyes downcast, had been apology enough. Bilbo hadn’t wanted him to apologise. Showing his heart had never felt more right. Trusting someone with it had never been so natural.

But Thorin had apologised about his perceived transgression, and Bilbo had let him. Sometimes an apology wasn’t for your own good but for the one repenting. Bilbo rubbed his feet together, letting the silence stretch between them before glancing up at the clockmaker.

“Will you stay?” Bilbo asked. His voice sounded small.

“If you want me to.”

“Do _you_ want to?”

Thorin looked at him. His lips twitched and he nodded once. It was almost imperceptible, but it was there. The canting of the head; the affirmation. Yes. Yes, I want to stay. Bilbo nodded back. Thorin relaxed into the seat, watching as Bilbo burrowed deeper into the covers. Now only half of his head peeked out of the sheets and blankets. He was sure he looked like a bug-eyed mess of curls.

Thorin took off his goggles, which had been hanging from his neck, and set them on the floor next to his feet. Then he removed his boots and did the same. He reached for his hair then but hesitated at the last moment, glancing at Bilbo.

“Do you mind if I…” Thorin gestured at his mane.

“No,” Bilbo said, though his reply was muffled by the covers. He tugged them down a little and tried again. “No, I don’t mind. Hair-brushing isn’t a big deal for us hobbits.”

“Oh.”

Thorin stared into the fire for a moment. He then began undoing his braids, but it looked mechanical. Bilbo’s comment had upset him. It wasn’t the best thing to say in a situation like this, Bilbo supposed. Then again, something like this had never been happened to him before. Bilbo wouldn’t have imagined that he would find himself sharing a room with another person in his adulthood. Cousins and friends staying the night when they were all children had been common until someone accidentally kicked his clock. From then on, his chambers had been his alone.

It was nice, Bilbo decided. It made his heart beat a little faster and his clock tick-tick a bit erratically, but it was all worth his body’s odd reactions. He thought about going to bed with Thorin in the room always, and he rather liked the idea. Thorin might like it as well, but Bilbo didn’t know how to go about proposing such a thing without stumbling over his words and blushing like a tween.

Next to the fireplace, Thorin’s fingers threaded through his strands. He slowly disentangled the silky dark mass with each gentle tug. His brow was furrowed in concentration, and it made Bilbo want to smooth a thumb over the creases so they would go away. Thorin wouldn’t mind. He would probably even grin under the soft touches, and then he would rest his head against Bilbo’s clock and hear the tick-tocking of his heart.

“I know that hair-brushing means a lot to dwarves, though,” Bilbo said, retaking their conversation. He started to feel his eyelids droop.

Thorin’s fingers stilled. He almost smiled. “Truly?”

“Truly,” Bilbo confirmed. “And I’m honoured you’d brush your hair in my presence.”

“I’m honoured you would allow it.”

“Considering you’ve seen my heart, this isn’t that big a deal for me.”

Thorin rolled his eyes and chuckled. “Is there anything you hobbits consider a big deal?”

“Well, there’s food. And family.”

Thorin hummed. “Family and food, then.”

“No, no.” Bilbo wriggled further into the covers. “I’m quite sure I said ‘food’ first.”

Thorin chuckled. It was a pleasant sound. Bilbo chuckled with him and then yawned. He was so tired all of a sudden. Strong emotional reactions always drained him.  His clock-heart ticked drowsily in his chest, its hands pointing to Thorin. Yes, Thorin. It was obvious they pointed to him, had been from the beginning, but Bilbo could only admit it to himself now. He wondered how long it would take before he gathered the courage to admit it out loud.

 _All in due time_ , a voice in his head reminded him. There was no point in hurrying things along. It would take as long as it needed to take. That was something Bilbo had learnt from a very young age. No matter how relative time was, it still hurried for no one. It might even take longer if you wished for it to pick up the pace. Not that Bilbo had learnt to accept this, but at least he was aware of it and so that made him less irritable towards himself for supposedly being slow at things.

And speaking of slowness, he couldn’t believe it had taken Thorin and him so long to reach this point in their relationship. The lines had always been a bit blurred between them, and Bilbo had always been left guessing what his role was. Client? Friend? Something else entirely? Not two months ago, Bilbo had never heard of Thorin the Clockmaker. Now he couldn’t imagine a world without Thorin, even if Thorin had little interest in being an active member of the world.

Not that Bilbo was that much of an active member himself. And he wasn’t quite sure what ‘this point in their relationship’ was, either. Letting Thorin sleep in his room’s armchair, maybe. Watching as Thorin took care of his hair while sitting in said armchair. Being in the same room without a reason other than because they wanted to.

“You should sleep,” said Thorin. His hair spilled down his shoulders, black with silver threads. Rock and mithril. “At least a little.”

“And you?”

“I’m already dreaming.”

Bilbo huffed a laugh. “If you say so.”

They said nothing more after that, and Bilbo closed his eyes. His clock’s hands stopped trying to jump out of his chest and at Thorin’s feet, and they retook their intended task, dancing slowly around the cuckoo’s round face. Relaxing as his sense of time returned to him, Bilbo decided that he would humour Thorin and sleep. He might get a telegram from the Shire in the morning, so it wouldn’t do to laze about in bed until noon. Right after sunrise, he would be up and about. Maybe send a second message. With that in mind, he let himself be pulled under, hoping Thorin might be still there when he woke up.

As he slept, Bilbo dreamt that golden light spilled out of his open chest and Captain Dís turned it into a clock. Except it wasn’t Captain Dís. It was Bilbo’s mother, and she handed the clock to Thorin after he promised to take care of it. The moment Bilbo’s mother evaporated—because such was the way of dreams—Thorin destroyed the clock with a hammer and a devastating pain bloomed in Bilbo’s chest. It was hot and it burnt right through him, and he clutched his breast with both hands and screamed.

When he woke up, it was with his throat’s muscles contracted like he had been holding back from letting loose a shriek. He gulped in some air, expecting it to be chilly since the fire always petered out during the night, but found the room temperature to be warm still. He had even tossed his covers aside during his restless sleep.

Bilbo registered the soft orange glow of a lit hearth then. He looked to the side and found his fireplace burning bright, Thorin fast asleep in the armchair, hands on his lap and legs outstretched in front of him. Some of his thick mane had fallen over his face in a dark curtain, but Bilbo could still see the way Thorin’s parted lips trembled whenever he exhaled. Bilbo swallowed and snuck a hand under his shirt, rubbing the skin around his clock. It hurt.

Shifting into a new position proved no less painful. He even lay on his belly, something he only did sporadically since he didn’t like the way his clock echoed inside his chest whenever he did; that only achieved to make the discomfort grow. Bilbo stifled a groan and stood up, slipping out of bed as quietly as possible. He barely made any sound, being a hobbit. Yet when he glanced in Thorin’s direction, he gave a strangled squeak; for a pair of clear-blue eyes was staring at him with far too much sharpness for having just woken.

Thorin straightened, making to stand up. “Is there a problem?”

“No!”

Bilbo hastened to hold his shirt closed with one hand, thankful for having kept his trousers on instead of removing them along with his braces. Then he remembered he used his braces for a reason and also hastened to hold his trousers with his other hand. Just in case. It wouldn’t do to embarrass himself.

“No,” he repeated, more civilly. “Why would there be a problem? I’m fine, really.”

“I have learnt not to believe you when you say that,” Thorin said, but leant back into the armchair. “Does your heart ache?”

Bilbo harrumphed. “A wee bit.”

Thorin did stand up then. “Let me.”

“I said just a wee bit, Thorin,” Bilbo groused. “Nothing to get worried about.”

“Bilbo,” Thorin said, and Bilbo felt a zing of pleasure shoot down his spine at the use of his name. “Did you lead me to believe that I could see your heart only to prove me wrong but a few hours later?”

“You can see it,” Bilbo said, but he made no move to uncover his chest.

Thorin raised an eyebrow. “Then prove it. And stop looking so frightened.”

“I’m not frightened.”

Bilbo sat back down on his bed. He crossed his arms and held Thorin’s look, narrowing his eyes and glaring for all he was worth. The clockmaker didn’t seem affected, but Bilbo had to admit that a hobbit with sleep-tousled hair must not look very impressive. Slowly, Thorin approached him.

“If you won’t let me see or touch, then how can I help?”

“Hand me your flask?” Bilbo said, then flushed. “The one you gave me. The oil has been, er, good. I was thinking of rubbing some into my gears last night before you…”

“Showed up?”

Bilbo gave him a look. “More like burst in.”

Thorin frowned at him, but his lips betrayed a small smile. He retrieved the flask from the bedside table. He had put it there the previous night after finding it on the mattress as he tucked Bilbo in. Bilbo held a hand out, and Thorin relinquished the flask before sitting down on the bed at a respectful distance.

Bilbo glanced at him and then at the flask. He traced the patterns carved onto the metal without being fully aware of it, but he did notice how Thorin’s eyes were drawn to the movement of his thumbs, as well as the softening of his expression. Bilbo blinked and shook himself, then popped the flask open. He gave Thorin a sheepish smile.

“This, er— I mean—”

Thorin began to get up. “I’ll leave.”

“No! No, wait! I just meant— This is a bit odd, but not in a, er, in a way that I oppose. I’m— It’s going to be a bit, er— What I mean is, I have to open my heart and the gears are kind of… But there’s no blood or anything! Perfectly clean business, I assure you. All the organic bits are at the far back so you won’t see— What are you— Are you laughing?”

“I won’t say yes if it ruffles you so.”

Bilbo almost threw the flask at him, but then he remembered that it was open. He settled for huffing and muttering about uncouth dwarves instead. Thorin seemed unfazed by it all, going as far as sitting cross-legged on the bed, drumming his fingers on his toes.

Feeling very shy, Bilbo tugged his shirt’s collar open and unlocked his clock, making the whole gold façade open like a door. A cousin had seen him like this, once. It had been an accident, and he had shrieked when he had noticed Drogo peeking from behind the divan. The younger boy had been nothing if not accepting, however, and maybe even a bit amazed by the inner workings of Bilbo’s clock.

“It’s like it has its own tiny skeleton inside,” Drogo had said. “Sort of like a bird.”

“I have a bird. A little cuckoo bird,” Bilbo had told him, not sure if he should cover his chest or not. “It’s made of gold and its eyes are pale-blue stones.”

“Can I see it?”

“No.”

And Bilbo had shut his heart.

Now, although he felt like locking it up again, he poured a little oil onto a palm, set the flask aside, and then rubbed his hands. He stole a glance to the side, but saw no disgust on Thorin’s face. Maybe even a bit of awe, but Bilbo wasn’t about to go running off with his assumptions. Thorin may have called his heart beautiful, but he had never seen the less pleasant bits. Bilbo went to such lengths to hide his clock for a reason.

He rubbed his fingertips against the gears, gasping a little as the oil, which was still a bit chilly, settled in. Bilbo had always found it peculiar, how he could feel what happened to his clock. It wasn’t part of his flesh, but he was still vaguely aware of it whenever something brushed against it. His parents had called it ghost sensations, but Bilbo had never understood very well what they had meant.

Thorin’s gaze was a weight upon him, so Bilbo hurried to get his mechanism oiled up. Once done, he wiped his hands on his shirt. His shirt! And it was his last clean one, too. He would have to see about doing some laundry soon. Walking around with soiled clothes wouldn’t do.

Bilbo closed his clock with a firm ka-click. Thorin didn’t say anything, but his discontent was obvious. Bilbo raised his eyebrows at him.

“Yes?”

Thorin sighed. “You will have to show me someday.”

“Someday.”

“Someday soon.”

Bilbo remembered Captain Dís then, and how she was supposed to give Thorin the information he needed to perform the surgery. The surgery that wasn’t a surgery. It was just a recalibrating. Simple as that.

“Yes,” he finally conceded. “Soon. But not now.”

Thorin raised both hands as if admitting defeat and then stood up. He took Bilbo’s flask and set it on the bedside table. Bilbo followed his movements with avid eyes. There was something soft about Thorin under all the layers of brooding. For a dwarf who enjoyed beating hard metal into shape for hours on end, he could be quite calm.

Bilbo continued to watch as Thorin went back to his armchair and put on his boots. They had so many buckles and clasps and laces that Bilbo was glad he was a hobbit and had no need for those things. He would be hopelessly lost if he ever required to wear a pair. Thorin tapped the floor with his heels and bunched up his hair into a high bun. He then scooped up his goggles and put them on again, this time as a headband.

“I’ll go see what progress Dís has made. You go back to bed,” Thorin suggested. “It’s still early.”

“Indeed it’s early.” Bilbo gave him a bemused look, settling back in. Now that no one would be there to stoke the fire, he made a point of slipping under the covers. “Are you sure the Captain will be up and about already? Not even the roosters are, yet.”

“She keeps late hours and sleeps little.”

“Oh. And is that, er— Isn’t that a bit detrimental to her health?”

“We all do that in our family.”

“But you’re clockmakers!”

Thorin raised an eyebrow, one hand already on the doorknob. “So?”

“So aren’t you supposed to… respect time or something?”

“I don’t know what that is supposed to mean.”

Bilbo waved a hand. “Nothing. Being clockmakers doesn’t make you clocks, I guess.”

“Indeed it doesn’t.”

Thorin left after that, whispering a ‘sleep well’ to Bilbo, and Bilbo was then left to wonder if he was the only one who felt like a clock because he had one. He had never seen others who owned a clock claim to be clocks, or to have a special bond with time or time-keeping. But it was different for Bilbo. He knew what time it was without looking at a watch. He could feel the passing of time like a physical thing—and it was a physical thing, though most people felt it more slowly than him. To Bilbo, it was like a bead of sweat running down his spine: Uncomfortable and kind of ticklish and impossible to ignore, but he missed it when his clock went haywire and left him wondering if it had been an hour or a minute since the cuckoo bird’s last song.

Bilbo sighed and stared up at the ceiling. He was tired of having a clock in his chest, even if he had never known a life without it not being there. Knowing that it wasn’t the norm was enough to wish it gone. Knowing that it wasn’t the norm was enough to make him wish he could just rip it out and live without it.

Some days he would daydream that someone had found an impossible solution to his problem—replacing his weak heart with a strong one, perhaps—and he would have his clock removed. And what would he do with it, then? Hang it on a wall and have it be the simple thing it was meant to be? Smash it to pieces for all the grief it had caused him?

The cuckoo clock hitched against his heart, but the oil kept it from locking up entirely. Still, it hurt. Bilbo rubbed his chest and groaned under his breath. Even if it was all he had ever known, he didn’t want a clock in his chest any more.

*** * ***

Bilbo woke up feeling disoriented and sluggish. He rolled out of bed with a groaning sigh and got dressed with his eyes closed, smoothing down his wrinkled shirt and shrugging his braces on after clinching them to his belt loops. He patted around for his jacket and then slipped it on. The room felt smothering despite the cold hearth, and so Bilbo decided to take a stroll to clear his head. Lack of fresh air always made him quite lethargic.

He had never had this problem quite so often, back in the Shire. He would walk down Bagshot Row each morning and start his day with a clear mind. Skipping breakfast had been something unthinkable until he ran out of his smial to find a clockmaker on the other side of the map, and now he could go with as little as four meals a day. Rising with the sun had become less common to him as well, no matter how much his clock cuckooed that it was high time to get up.

One could say Bilbo was a changed hobbit. Radically by some standards, and subtly by others. The truth of the matter remained the same: Bilbo wasn’t the same as he had been. He found he didn’t quite mind. Life in Bag End had grown somewhat lacking in the last couple of years. Bilbo couldn’t say why or when it had started, but now that he had accepted that stagnation wasn’t his cup of tea, he couldn’t be gladder he had let Gandalf push him out the door and onto an airship.

Right outside his door, Bilbo found Fíli and Kíli sitting with their backs propped against the wall. When they saw him, the brothers jumped to their feet and flanked him.

“Good morning, Bilbo!” said Kíli.

“Slept well?” asked Fíli.

“Yes, I did.” Bilbo smiled at them. “Did you?”

“Yes.”

Kíli linked their arms. Fíli did the same on Bilbo’s other side. Before he could protest the perceived manhandling, they were steering him down the hallway.

“We were wondering if you’d like to have breakfast with Mum and us?” asked Kíli. “It’s been ready for an hour or so, but Uncle told us not to wake you.”

“You need to be well-rested,” said Fíli.

“So we hope you like cold porridge.”

“Oh, er, thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” smiled the brothers.

They talked about nothing in particular as they made their way to have breakfast. When they reached the room, Bilbo lost no time in helping Captain Dís get everything sorted out and served. The porridge wasn’t cold, thankfully, since she had kept it at a low fire. Fíli and Kíli were never so mindful, and it surprised Bilbo that they hadn’t learnt from their mother to keep their meals warm. When he told her as much, she rolled her eyes.

Thorin was nowhere to be seen, but Bilbo tried not to let it bother him. His clockmaker might be absent, but the company was still pleasant. Besides, his clock tended to behave better whenever Thorin wasn’t nearby to drive it into a frenzy.

They ate at an unhurried pace, the brothers making easy conversation of anything and everything that came to their minds, sometimes even managing to make the Captain talk for almost a full minute before she retreated back behind her curtain of noble silence. Bilbo wondered if he would see her sit back and relax completely in his presence before he left. Time was running out and he feared that he wouldn’t get to know them all as much as he wanted.

Because he was going to leave. He had to return home at some point. To his doilies and pantries and round green door. The ache of longing had dulled considerably during his stay in Erebor, but it hadn’t quite gone enough to let him forget the Shire. He yearned to see it again, to run his hands through the tall grasses of Tuckborough and dip his toes in the brown waters of the Brandywine River. A small part of him also yearned to show all of that to Thorin and his family, but Bilbo made sure to keep that part of him hushed up and in a corner most of the time.

“We got a telegram, by the way,” Fíli commented between one spoonful and the other. “This morning, quite early. From a ‘Lobelia’ woman.”

“Here,” Kíli handed Bilbo a slip of paper.

Bilbo took it, setting his bowl down and unfolding the little piece of parchment with trembling fingers. He wondered what Lobelia could have sent. A string of insults? Comments on how he was a disgrace? Well, whatever she had said, he wouldn’t dwell on it much. The message he had sent hadn’t been for her, and he didn’t pay any mind to the words of snoops.

But her message wasn’t at all ill-mannered. A bit blunt and demanding, yes, but Lobelia had never been known to beat around the bush. It was only one sentence: COME BACK STOP. _Come back_ , Bilbo thought, tracing the message with his finger. It wasn’t her handwriting, of course. One of the boys had jotted it down after receiving the code, yet Bilbo couldn’t help but trace the letters. _Come back_. He wanted to go back, and it made him glad that Lobelia of all people would demand that he did.

Not quite capable of hiding his smile, Bilbo folded the paper and slipped it into his jacket’s breast pocket. At his audience’s inquiring looks, he gave it a little pat and said, “Cousin of mine.”

“She seems forceful,” said Captain Dís.

“She is,” Bilbo laughed. “We don’t really get on.”

“Then why did she tell you to go back?” asked Kíli. “I wouldn’t want you to return if I didn’t like you.”

“Well, we’re still family, and my mother did ask her to look after me before passing away.” Bilbo picked his bowl back up but made no move to continue eating. He chuckled. “I’m sure Mum asked her of all people because she knew Lobelia would be the only one brave and annoying enough to poke her nose into my business at every turn and make sure I wasn’t doing things too horribly.”

“She didn’t look after your heart very well,” the Captain pointed out.

“Where I come from, no one knows how to take care of my clock-heart but me,” Bilbo said. He smiled ruefully. “And even I wasn’t very good at doing it, as you can see. Hobbits aren’t meant to deal with this sort of things.”

“You’ve dealt with it for fifty years,” said Fíli. “I think you did well.”

“Thank you.”

“But I bet it’ll be a relief when you get it fixed, aye?” asked Kíli. Fíli’s elbow connected with his ribs and he hurried to say, “Recalibrated! Recalibrated, I mean.”

“Yes, indeed. It will be quite a relief.”

“You won’t have to wait much longer,” Captain Dís assured him. “Thorin is getting everything ready right now.”

“What? Now?” Bilbo blinked at her. “So you managed to decipher the text?”

“Yes. It yielded little information, but enough to proceed without worry of accidentally causing you harm.” The Captain set her empty bowl down and took a swig of milk before saying, “Thorin would never forgive himself if he broke your heart.”

“Oh, well, that’s, er, sweet of him.”

“It is.”

They said nothing more on the subject after that, Kíli diverting the conversation to his latest hunting trip with Fíli. Bilbo and the Captain listened politely and commented every now and again, but the hobbit’s thoughts kept straying to what Captain Dís had said. Thorin was getting things ready, and Bilbo wasn’t foolish enough to believe he would wait to recalibrate the clock-heart. He would probably track Bilbo down when he was done and ask him to come with him down to the workshop.

Bilbo could say no; that much he was sure of—but should he? His heart ached more and more with every day that passed, and postponing the recalibrating could prove quite unwise. He finished his breakfast and excused himself, heading back to his room as he thought about what to do.

Thorin could be trusted, and Bilbo had decided to trust him with his heart, but that didn’t mean that he was ready to do it just yet. Bilbo liked things to go slow, take his time, pace things right. There was no point in hurrying along if you would just end up crashing against a wall. However, he knew that he sometimes went too slowly; so slowly that he froze in the spot and let things pass him by.

Perhaps it was time to take a leap of faith and run ahead instead of waiting for a sign that would never come. He remembered the small piece of paper tucked behind his cuckoo bird, the three rules written in it, and decided that it was about high time he stopped paying the rules so much attention. He had lost his temper a lot during his life, and he was still alive. He had never touched the hands of the clock, per se, but his emotions had made them spin and twitch countless time, and he was still alive.

He had never fallen in love, but he just might. He could only hope that his luck would hold and he would remain alive after breaking the last rule. It would be terribly anticlimactic if it didn’t.

*** * ***

Thorin came looking for Bilbo in the afternoon. The hobbit had decided to stay cooped up in his room for the day. Captain Dís had been gracious enough to send his lunch up along with some snacks in case he grew hungry later on.

Fíli and Kíli had tried to make him join them in a game of rocks and gems that they assured was great fun, but he hadn’t caved. It wouldn’t do to have the clockmaker looking for him needlessly. The brothers had yielded to his wishes and lounged around his room instead, playing their game quietly as Bilbo read.

Just as Bilbo was about to begin a new chapter, there was a knock on the door. Everyone in the room froze, and the brothers looked at Bilbo with openly expectant expressions on their faces. Bilbo set the book on his bedside table and went to open the door. Thorin stood right outside, sporting periwinkle-blue clothes and a tool belt. His hair was held back with a clasp and his strange goggles were hanging from his neck.

“Bilbo.” Thorin inclined his head.

“Thorin, hello.” Bilbo wasn’t quite sure if he should invite Thorin inside or being walking down the hallway. In the end, he asked, “So everything’s ready?”

“Yes. I just came here to tell you that.” Thorin paused and looked down. If he were one to wring his hands, Bilbo thought, he would be doing it now. The clockmaker sighed and cleared his throat, meeting Bilbo’s gaze once again. “You must understand that the sooner we do this, the better. But it’s still up to you to decide when you are ready.”

“I am.”

“Yes, I know you— Sorry, what?”

“I am ready.” Bilbo grinned at Thorin’s baffled expression, feeling like he had accomplished something. “Shall we?”

It took a long moment, but the dwarf finally managed to say, “Yes.”

Fíli and Kíli said nothing as Bilbo exited the room, but he was sure that they would be whispering soon enough. About what, Bilbo could only guess. His sudden willingness, perhaps, or the way his face had lit up at the sight of their uncle. Bilbo didn’t care. He was nervous about what was soon going to happen, but what really had him on his toes was the dwarf by his side.

Again, Bilbo wondered if breaking the last rule would be a good idea. He hoped it was. It wasn’t like he had ever been good at managing his emotions, and he had to admit that he had been slowly inching towards feeling a strong affection for Thorin from the moment the dwarf made his clock go wild upon their first meeting. Turning back wasn’t something Bilbo would be able to do, even if he attempted as much.

They walked down the stone hallways in silence, the clock-heart’s ticking bouncing off the walls. Tick-tock, tick-tock. It was almost as if it were judging Bilbo for letting a stranger near it, but Bilbo gave a little shake of his head, not quite repressing his smile. Thorin was not a stranger any longer. He was… more. He was Thorin, and that was plenty.

The doors to the workshop were open, and they slipped inside with only the sound of their footsteps to announce their arrival. Captain Dís was there, stroking her dark mutton chops as she pored over the ‘unconventional’ book. Thorin cleared his throat and she looked up, making a harsh spitting sound. Bilbo realised with a start that they were talking in their mother tongue, and was embarrassed to have confused it with meaningless sounds again. Dwarvish was so very different from Westron and Elvish!

“Master Hobbit,” she greeted, standing up.

“Ah, hello, yes.” Bilbo shifted his stance. “How do you do.”

The Captain raised an eyebrow, and Bilbo could have kicked himself. It was a habit of his, falling back into pleasant Shire chitchat when he had no idea what to say. The dwarves aboard the Ered Luin had teased him for it, which had only made him more flustered and hobbitish in his manner of speech.

“I’m fine,” she said, humouring Bilbo, and then turned to her brother. “The text has yielded nothing else, as I told you it would be. Are you satisfied now?”

“Yes.”

“Well, good. I shall leave you to it, then.” Captain Dís patted Bilbo on the shoulder. “Galikh amsâl, Master Baggins.”

“Er, yes, likewise.”

The Captain’s eyes twinkled with amusement, but she left without uttering another word. The workshop’s doors closed behind her, hissing and whirring as the locking mechanism slid into place. Bilbo gave Thorin a confused look. The dwarf also showed signs of amusement.

“What was that?”

“She wished you good luck.”

“Oh!” Bilbo looked at the closed doors. “Thank you.”

“She can’t hear you.”

“Still,” Bilbo shrugged. “It doesn’t hurt me to thank her, does it? What’s all this?”

He gestured at the nearest workbench. It had been cleared out; several blankets and pillows lay on top of it, and Bilbo pressed his hand to them, feeling the soft fabrics give a little under the pressure. He wondered if Thorin slept here sometimes, like this, and if two people would fit if they slept side by side. Then it occurred to him that Thorin had prepared the impromptu bed for him.

The dwarf confirmed his thoughts by making a slightly embarrassed sound and shuffling his feet. He rubbed his nose and went to sort through his tools, avoiding Bilbo’s gaze.

“I thought you would like being comfortable.”

“I would,” Bilbo nodded, running a hand over the thick blankets. “Thank you.” When Thorin didn’t say anything, Bilbo huffed, “ _You_ can hear me, unlike the Captain.”

“Well, I… You’re welcome,” Thorin mumbled.

Bilbo hopped onto the workbench, a small smile tugging at his lips. His feet dangled off the edge, and he tapped his woolly toes together as he watched Thorin putter around. Finally, after the dwarf replaced some of the tools in his belt with others, he made his way to Bilbo and instructed him to lay down. Bilbo leant back until he was resting against the pillows, and he wiggled a little to make himself comfortable.

“All right?” asked Thorin.

Bilbo nodded, twirling his thumbs. His eyes flickered up to Thorin’s and then down to his lips. Then he squirmed and looked down at his hands. He could feel the embarrassment flooding his cheeks.

Thorin didn’t seem to notice anything, readjusting the tool belt around his waist. He then undid the clasp in his hair and twisted his mane into a high ponytail, holding it in place with the clasp once more. One of his plaits came loose, brushing against Thorin’s cheekbone for a moment before Thorin tugged it behind an ear. The heavy bead at the end glinted in the workshop’s light, and Bilbo found himself transfixed by it.

“Can I ask you something?” he piped up.

Thorin rested his hands on the blankets. “Tell me.”

“Will you kiss me?”

The way Thorin’s eyes widened made Bilbo chuckle despite his nerves. He shifted again against the pillows. Perhaps he had been too straightforward in his request? A hobbit would never be so blunt, but Bilbo had guessed that dwarves were. Compared to Bilbo’s kind, they had always demonstrated to have little qualms about primness and properness.

Maybe Bilbo had been wrong. Or maybe the fact that most dwarves were like that didn’t mean that all were the same. Wasn’t Bilbo himself unlike any other hobbit? He should know better than rush ahead and make assumptions based on what he had learnt from a small group.

“It’s all right if you don’t want to,” Bilbo hastened to say. “I just…”

Bilbo trailed off, his face growing hot at the sight of Thorin’s reddened cheeks. He cleared his throat and tugged at a loose thread on his jacket’s sleeve. Maybe he shouldn’t have said anything. The fact that Thorin had looked over him as he slept the night before didn’t have to mean something special; it could be just an act of friendliness that Bilbo had misunderstood.

Thorin leant forwards. The ponytail highlighted everything about his face: The hard jaw, the straight nose, the sharp cheekbones. Thorin was a monument to the sort of beauty that stood out due to its rawness rather than its subtleness. Bilbo felt his eyelids droop as the dwarf moved closer, his chest pressing against Bilbo’s shoulder. The cuckoo clock ticked away in Bilbo’s chest, but the thumping of his heart drowned out the mechanism’s noise.

When Thorin’s lips brushed his own, Bilbo’s closed his eyes and the world went quiet. It was like being underwater, except he was drowning in fire as his mouth moved against Thorin’s. He took a shuddering breath and slid a hand to cup the nape of Thorin’s neck. That earned him a little sound of approval. A hand settled near his clock, caressing his chest through his clothes.

Bilbo’s breath hitched, and then he screamed as his cuckoo bird started screeching. It snapped out of his chest and stabbed Thorin’s arm with its little golden beak. Thorin jumped back, spitting something in dwarvish between gritted teeth, then leant back in.

“Bilbo, are you all right? Bilbo?”

He wasn’t. It hurt, even more than the stinging ache he had felt the night before. He was no longer kissing Thorin but the fire remained, burning him from the inside out as he writhed in the worktable. Smoke was coming out of his chest, and he remember that first day when he had met Thorin and his heart had almost catapulted itself out of his chest to reach the dwarf.

 _So this is why I must never ever fall in love_ , Bilbo thought. Then he passed out with Thorin’s blue and distraught eyes looking down at him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I HAVE UPDATED.  
> Sorry, peeps. I promise I haven't abandoned this story; I just had a bit of a block. Still do, but I'mma fight that bitch. In other news, I had meant this chapter to be the last but the characters had a different idea HAHA. So yeah, enjoy the cliffhanger. I'll try not to leave you waiting so long for chapter 9! HUGE THANKS to my beta(s) who fixed a lot of embarrassing mistakes.


	9. Chapter 9

Bilbo’s clock wasn’t ticking when he woke up. His first reaction was to have a very quiet meltdown, wondering if he had overslept on a Sunday and forgotten to wind it. Then the more rational part of his brain shook itself awake and reminded Bilbo that it wasn’t Sunday and he was actually having his heart fixed, which prompted him to ponder if something had gone wrong. Thorin would be feeling terrible if it had.

Before he could feel too bad about dying on the dwarf, his rational side of the brain piped up again, pointing out that he wasn’t dead yet. It was a solid argument, so Bilbo decided to try opening his eyes. He expected blinding light to reward him for his efforts, but instead pried his eyelids open to the dimness of the workshop. Bilbo looked around, his sluggish curiosity lifting like a fog the more he distanced himself from his waking moment. He could tell that not much time had passed, only a few hours, yet his body felt as if he had roused after months of uninterrupted sleep. It was a bit exasperating, but he supposed that having one’s clock-heart recalibrated could cause certain fatigue.

There was a noise to his left and he turned his head that way, slow so as to not become dazed, and locked eyes with Thorin. Accustomed to the way his clock went haywire whenever he was in the dwarf’s vicinity, Bilbo raised a hand to rub at his chest, but there was no familiar aching to soothe. In fact, there was no familiar clock. Confusion and no small amount of panic took over him. He looked down at his bare chest and blinked in surprise.

A silvery clock rested where his old cuckoo had been, lustrous and glittering like clear water under the midday sun. Its hands didn’t tick, but rather rotated in what Bilbo could only describe as a gliding motion. He let out a breath that was equal parts relief and awe, trembling fingers running over the immaculate crystal of the clock’s face.

It felt different, but not in a bad way. Bilbo was a bit of a sentimental fool, so he had to admit that he missed his gold clock-heart, but this one looked beautiful and it ran in perfect synchrony with his beating heart. He rested his head back against the blankets, the angle allowing him to look at Thorin.

“Hello,” he murmured with a little smile.

Thorin didn’t say anything. He just stayed there, arms crossed and posture rigid as he sat in the chair, half-hidden in sharp shadows and staring at Bilbo with unwavering eyes. In all truth, Bilbo wanted to ignore the dwarf’s unnerving stillness, so that was exactly what he did. He was alive, after all, which meant that nothing had gone awry, which meant that Thorin had no reason to be acting this way.

“I like the upgrade,” he said, his smile growing.

“I almost killed you.”

“What?” Bilbo’s smile evaporated. “No, you didn’t.”

Thorin looked down, uncrossing his arms to link his fingers over his lap. He twiddled his thumbs, watching the movement for one long minute. Bilbo didn’t know what to make of the silence, or of Thorin’s comment, or of the tense atmosphere. He was fine. There had been some complications, obviously, if Thorin had had to cut out his clock and put in a new one, but it was all in the past. He was all right, and even if Thorin may have worried before, he should be glad now.

Bilbo held out a hand, letting it dangle over the edge of the worktop.

“Thorin.”

The dwarf still said nothing. Bilbo wriggled his fingers, trying to get his attention. Thorin kept on looking at his twiddling thumbs. Bilbo doubted he had suddenly become deaf, and he didn’t appreciate being ignored in such a blatant way. He snapped his fingers once, just like his mother would whenever she caught him daydreaming when he was supposed to be minding the cooking.

“Thorin.”

That got a reaction, but not the one Bilbo had been expecting or hoping for. Rather than take Bilbo’s hands in his, or snap at him, or do something more or less Thorin-like, the clockmaker twisted around and lifted something from a metal box. Bilbo felt morbid fascination at the sight of his gold clock—his heart, a part of him yelled in his head—resting silently in someone’s hands.

Thorin traced a finger over its small doors and pulled them open with an impossible amount of care. He rummaged around the tiny opening before pulling back out with a small piece of paper. Bilbo knew that piece of paper. He knew its contents as well, and he could rattle them off at the drop of a pin. He also knew that he had never mentioned that paper to Thorin, or its contents. His odd behaviour started to make more sense to Bilbo. A sense of dread began to expand through his chest.

“Thorin,” he repeated, but this time it was a plea. The dwarf unfolded the piece of paper and Bilbo said again, his voice quivering, “Thorin.”

“You knew what it would do to you,” he said, his tone smooth as a dagger’s edge, “and you still asked.”

“The rules can be bent a little. I’ve lost my temper before.”

“But never touched the hands of your clock,” Thorin replied, “or fallen in love.”

“Thorin—”

“Have you?”

“I— No, I haven’t.”

“So you didn’t know what would happen. You didn’t know.”

“Falling in love isn’t the same as asking for a kiss, Thorin!” Bilbo snapped, though it was a feeble excuse at best and they both knew it. He attempted to sit up, but weak as he was, he collapsed back into the blankets with a grunt. He muttered, “I just wanted to see what it might feel like.”

“Like death, apparently,” said Thorin.

“Well, I didn’t know.”

“But you suspected it.”

“I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that.”

“Were you?” Thorin rumbled, his eyes hard. “Why not wait until after I was done fixing your heart, then? The chance of having something go awry would have been lower.”

“In all honesty, didn’t think about it.”

“I am not sure about how much I should trust your honesty.”

Bilbo scowled at him. “If I had wanted to just… be done with everything, I wouldn’t have embarked on such a journey to find the only person who can save my life. Bit pointless, right?”

“I don’t pretend to understand you. Tried to, but never have—and certainly never will, after this.”

The words felt like a slap. Bilbo braced for the instant when the cogs of his clock would lock up, jaw gritting and fingers curling, but the new mechanism continued to work without a hitch. He frowned, confused, but let his body relax. Thorin watched him, his blue eyes taking in the whole process first with worry and then with some satisfaction.

As fast as it had come, the smugness left Thorin’s features. He set the gold clock on his lap and held up the small bit of parchment that Bilbo had carried with him for almost his whole life. Bilbo now wondered why he hadn’t thrown it away. He remembered every word in it, and had Thorin not found it, they wouldn’t be quarrelling. Probably, there would be some more kisses, soft and warm and full of gladness. His face crumbled and he tried to say something, anything, to make Thorin believe that he hadn’t been looking to cause himself harm, but the words wouldn’t come.

“I will have you know that I didn’t appreciate being the dwarf who almost ended your life,” continued Thorin, his expression caught between a glower and a grimace. “I didn’t even know what a simple kiss might do to you.”

“Well, neither did I! I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the Rubrics, all right?” Bilbo crossed his arms and glared at the ceiling. He felt like crying but refrained from letting any tears slip down his face. “I am, really, but you wouldn’t have agreed if I had told you.”

“Because I am too fond of your being alive to risk losing you over something as inconsequential as a kiss!”

“It wasn’t inconsequential to me.” Bilbo rolled on his side, his back to Thorin. “To you, it might have been, but you don’t live in fear of what allowing such closeness may cause you.”

“Bilbo,” Thorin sighed, “you cannot expect me to let this go so easily. You put yourself in unnecessary danger.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

Bilbo turned to face Thorin again. They looked at each other, assessing, and the moment seemed to stretch. The workshop was quiet around them. The clocks around them remained silent, no ticking to be heard. It was as if the world had suddenly become a place devoid of that familiar sound. Bilbo felt as if his chest were empty.

Thorin stood up, his eyes fleeting over Bilbo’s body and fingers curled around the gold clock. For a second, Bilbo thought he might do something. Close the distance between them in some way. Maybe place a hand over Bilbo’s, brush his lips over his cheek, anything at all. But Thorin only moved to put the Rubrics back where he had found them and shut the cuckoo, his expression closing along with the small doors.

“Rest,” he said softly, returning the clock to the metal box. Then he walked out of the workshop, the great iron doors hissing closed after him. It occurred to Bilbo that there seemed to be closing doors everywhere.

* * *

Captain Dís was there when Bilbo next woke up. He didn’t recall falling asleep, but his mind and body had pulled him under to get some much-needed rest. Weeping something fierce might have depleted his already low energy faster too.

Bilbo gave the captain a little smile, not sure if she was here to check up on him or slap him. Like her brother, she looked at Bilbo but said nothing, which wasn’t very pleasant. Bilbo was getting quite tired of the siblings and their preference for long stares and scarce words. Hobbits as a rule were talkative and refrained from holding eye contact for too long. It was considered impolite, and for once Bilbo agreed with the rest of his ken.

“I see you have a new clock,” the captain said at last, her eyes sliding down to Bilbo’s chest. “Fine piece of craft, that.”

“Ah, er, yes.” Bilbo flushed and threw a blanket over his naked skin. “Thorin saw fit to replace my original clock.”

“I understand there was an altercation,” Dís murmured, brushing invisible dust off her skirts. “He had no other choice but to use the clock that is now on your chest, though I am sure he would have preferred giving it to you under different circumstances.”

Bilbo opened his mouth and then closed it. Of course he had noticed that the new clock fit in his chest too well to be anything but custom made, but he had tried not to think about that more than strictly necessary. He and Thorin weren’t on good terms right now, or something like that, so it wouldn’t do Bilbo any good to dwell on just how much the dwarf cared about him.

He hadn’t lied to Thorin. It was true that he had lost his temper before, but he had also tried to stick to the Rubrics as much as he could throughout his life. They were the only thing he could rely on to keep his heart safe, and only after beginning to see a bit more of the world and allowing himself to grow attached to people did he realise that maybe straying from the path wouldn’t be that bad a thing. Still, his parents’ warnings rang loudly in his head, and gathering his courage was hence a slow progress.

What would they think if they saw him now? Would they approve of his new clock? He was sure they would. They had always wanted him to live, after all, and to live well. If the old clock was an impediment to that, then they would have had no qualms about Bilbo getting a new one. But would they approve of who had done the switch, and under what circumstances? Bilbo doubted they would be very proud of him if they heard of his accidentally self-induced loss of consciousness—and all because of a kiss. He could see his father’s brow furrowing and his mother shaking her head in exasperation.

Had it only been a loss of consciousness? The way Captain Dís and Thorin talked about it made it sound as if it were something much graver. A heart attack? Bilbo had certainly felt a lot of pain at the moment, but he wasn’t sure if heart attacks were like that. Yet it had been something more serious than fainting, and guilt washed over Bilbo at what he had made Thorin go through.

He could have waited until after Thorin was done recalibrating his heart. After the dwarf had pointed that out, Bilbo had thought himself the biggest fool. He hadn’t even considered that option back then, and in his haste to feel what he had never been allowed, he had hurt someone whom he loved. One could excuse him saying that he had been worried that something might go wrong and he might not make it out of the workshop, but his actions had still been selfish.

“Is he very cross with me?”

Captain Dís sighed. “In truth, we all are a little cross with you right now.”

Bilbo was getting tired of having to explain himself—he shouldn’t even need to—but the guilt was still thick in his throat, so he averted his gaze and mumbled, “I’m sorry, Captain. I didn’t mean—”

“Peace, Master Baggins. We know. Still, we would have appreciated knowing about the rules. Everything worked out in the end, but had we known about them, we would have…”

“Would have what?” Bilbo prompted, narrowing his eyes at her hesitance.

“Been more careful,” she finished.

“More careful!” he huffed. “Now, what in that world does that even mean? Do you mean you would have remained at a safe distance? Remained strangers to me? Or perhaps you would have gone out of your way to avoid making me mad? Maybe even tied my hands behind my back to make sure I didn’t fiddle with the hands of my clock!”

“We would have tried to look after you better than we have,” the captain said. Bilbo was annoyed at how calm she remained in the face of his displeasure. “I doubt we would have been able to keep our distance, but we would have gone about getting closer in a different way.”

“Different.” Bilbo eyed her with suspicion. “How?”

“Less dwarven, for starters,” Captain Dís said, and Bilbo snorted. She raised an eyebrow. “I am serious. We dwarves can be quite brusque, and even absolute brutes when compared to hobbits. Or so I’ve been told.”

“I find you all charming,” Bilbo replied, his little smile returning. “Being treated like porcelain gets old pretty fast, and I’ve been handled with such excessive care my whole life. You never treated me like that, even after you found out about this.” He motioned at his chest and tugged the blanket a little higher. “Well, Fíli was a bit of a worrier, but I think that’s just the way he is.”

“He frets over everyone, my eldest,” the captain agreed. “It’s in his nature.”

She stood up then, as silent as a cat on the prowl. Bilbo clasped his hands over the blanket, awaiting the words that he was sure would come. Perhaps in the form of a final reprimand or a wish for him to stay healthy. Captain Dís said, as it was often the case with dwarves, something entirely different from what he was expecting.

“That is mithril, you know,” she said.

Then she was gone, the door hissing shut behind her. Bilbo let out a hiss of his own. He tossed the covers off and slowly maneuvered himself into a sitting position. A hand came up to touch his new clock. Mithril. And to think he had believed his previous clock, made of pure gold, to be too fancy a thing! Now the purest and strongest of metals sat in his chest.

He traced the rim of the clock with a fingers, gasping in pain. His skin was red and tender there, and Bilbo wondered how Thorin had managed to take out his other clock and put this new one in without having him bleed out on the table. After thinking about it for a moment, he shuddered. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

Time passed. He remained there for hours, shifting, lying down and sitting up, his eyes travelling the length of the walls, up and down, left and right. At some point, he thought he could hear ticking, but it always faded once he started paying more attention. Was it possible that he was imagining it? He had lived with ticking his whole life, so maybe his mind was inventing the familiar sound for him. Bilbo didn’t know if that would be a good or a bad thing in the long run.

Fíli came to give him some food on three different occasions. The first time, he helped Bilbo into a dwarven shirt, rougher than Bilbo’s cotton one but still welcome, and then teased him about whether he needed to be spoon-fed his broth or not. They chatted about inane things and then Fíli said that he was glad to see him well before leaving with Bilbo’s empty bowl. The other two times, their conversation was more subdued and in the end the hobbit asked what he had been wanting to know:

“Will Thorin come?”

“I suppose so,” said the blonde, tugging at his braided moustache. “He is still a bit… I don’t know. I would say angry but that is too simple an emotion. He is still rattled, I think, over what could have happened, and frustrated with you for having kept your silence over it.”

“I didn’t wish to worry him over something that wasn’t certain.”

“He prefers excessive caution over excessive confidence,” Fíli replied, then reached for the piece of bread that Bilbo’s nervous fingers had systematically destroyed. “It would be good if you kept that in mind from now on. Save us all a lot of grief.”

“Agreed,” Bilbo said, then snatched back his bread. He dipped it in the broth—having three tasteless meals in a row was quite depressing, but he understood that he should take it easy with food at first—and took a small bite. “So when do you think he will come?”

“I can go get him now.”

“No, no. He should come on his own.”

Fíli nodded. “Well, Kíli’s been keeping him company, just in case he needs to rant at someone rather than at an inanimate object at some point. He told me to tell you that he sends you a big hug.”

Bilbo smiled into his broth. It made him happy to see that even if Thorin was mad at him, the rest of his family was willing to sit by his side and send him kind words as he regained his strength. He took a sip of the broth, and this time, it almost tasted good.

* * *

It took a whole day before Thorin appeared. Dís and Fíli had helped Bilbo to his room the morning after he woke up from getting his clock replaced. He thought that having two dwarves flank him was unnecessary since he could walk unaided, but his slow shuffling had made mother and son determined to see him to his quarters. Once there, the captain left and her sons—Kíli had joined them just as they reached Bilbo’s door—helped him wash and change into fresh clothes. Then they also left, bowing and promising to get him some food soon.

Bilbo settled into his bed and picked up the book on his bedside table. He had already read it and he wasn’t interested in plodding through its frankly somniferous yet again, so he just ran a hand over its spine and set it back down. It was then that someone knocked.

“It’s open,” he called.

The door opened to reveal Thorin, and Bilbo wished he had kept the book in his hands for a little longer. It would have kept him from fidgeting. As it was, his fingers curled round the blanket covering his legs.

“Oh. Hello.”

“Hello,” Thorin said, looking down at his boots. “May I come in?”

“Yes, of course.”

Thorin closed the door behind him and then stood there, looking as if he hadn’t quite decided what to do after being allowed entrance. Bilbo couldn’t blame him. Despite having wanted to see Thorin from the very moment he had walked out of the workshop, he wasn’t sure of what to do either—or rather of what to say.

It was as if they had been relying on the ticking of his clock to fill with meaning the silences between them all this time. But now the ticking was gone and there were conversations that needed to be had. It was much easier, however, thinking about it than acting on those thoughts.

With a small sigh, Bilbo let go of the blanket and twirled his thumbs. All the words that had been clogging up his head until Thorin knocked on the door had vanished without a trace. It wasn’t Thorin’s fault; it was his nerves’ fault. But his nerves were Thorin’s fault, which made Bilbo want to blame Thorin for everything and leave in a huff. That would be unfair, though, so he raised a hand to rub at his face and then got out of bed.

“Can we talk?”

“I was hoping we would,” said the dwarf. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, then gestured at the fireplace with its armchairs. “Shall we sit?”

“Of course.”

Bilbo shuffled to one of the armchairs and sat down. Thorin followed suit, lowering himself with a lot more care than it was usual for him. Maybe he was scared that brusque movements would make Bilbo’s clock malfunction? Impossible. That would be the same as saying he didn’t trust his skills as a clockmaker. Then again, Bilbo’s clock was more than just a clock, and Thorin had always been so very careful when dealing with it…

He crossed his arms, feeling the new mechanism against his arms. It was far too stealthy to his liking, but it was there, and that was a consolation. To think that Bilbo had cursed his old clock so many times before, wished it gone, and now missed it like a grounded young hobbit misses dessert.

All of a sudden, he wondered what would life be without its golden face sending the afternoon light bouncing off his chest when he wandered around Bag End with his shirt popped open, without its clothes getting snagged on its angles, without its tick-tock-ticking—sometimes lonely, sometimes comforting—following him wherever he went. It would be a very different life, one he wasn’t sure would agree with him. He wasn’t averse to changes, unlike most of his kind, but he did feel most at ease when the things he knew remained known. Now his clock, the mechanical part of his heart, was a stranger to him, and that was frightening.

But first things first. He had travelled half a world to stay alive, and alive he had stayed. He should thank the person who made such a thing possible before anything else, so he did.

“I wanted to tell you—thank you. From the bottom of my heart. All of it, mithril and flesh.”

Thorin gazed at him for a long moment. “Dís told you.”

“She did,” Bilbo agreed. His arms tightened around his torso, but he smiled. “I had never seen mithril before. Certainly never expected to have a chunk of it attached to my chest, but I guess many things I hadn’t expected to happen happened during this journey of mine.”

“The world is full of surprises.”

“I thought surprises were supposed to find you.”

“Didn’t they?”

“I wouldn’t think so, no. I came to _Erebor_ , after all,” Bilbo sniffed, crossing his legs at the ankles. “For the surprise to find me, you would have had to travel to the Shire.”

“Ah.” Thorin nodded. “Then I suppose I am the one who was surprised, since you came to me.”

“I suppose.”

“But the clock came to you,” Thorin said, pointing at Bilbo’s chest. “Curious, that. I had been working on that piece for some time. Kept it simple, small, silent—as if some part of me had known you, whom I hadn’t yet met, would need it. I finished it not that long ago, with some input from Dís.”

“So that’s why you actually needed her here!”

“I actually did need her help with translating the book, but her superior knowledge of contraptions such as this helped me make your new clock even better.” Thorin’s brow crinkled. “I hope it will keep you hale for as long as it must.”

“And if there ever were a hiccup, you will be here to fix it for me,” Bilbo said, uncrossing his arms and placing his hands on the armrests. “Won’t you?”

“Now you admit it’s fixing and not recalibrating?”

“I do if you say you will.”

“I will.”

“Then I do.”

They smiled at each other.

“I understand I should have asked your permission,” murmured Thorin, looking down at his hands, “before replacing your old clock—but it all happened so quickly! I had meant to present it as a gift, though now I see I should have done it on a previous day and not just seconds before the intervention, but I didn’t even get to show it to you. I didn’t even get to finish our kiss.”

“I wouldn’t mind finishing what we started,” said Bilbo, “but first I’d like to tell you that I appreciate you made the choice you made. I want to live, and if that required getting a new clock, so be it. Of course this doesn’t mean you can make choices regarding my person without asking me, but that was an emergency.”

“So I can decide for you in an emergency?”

“We’ll have to decide what qualifies as an emergency,” chuckled Bilbo. “But yes. That is what people usually do, isn’t it? Designate someone to choose on their behalf in case they cannot?”

“That privilege is often reserved for family members or... close acquaintances.”

Bilbo raised an eyebrow at him. “Would you call us ‘close acquaintances’?”

“I don’t wish to presume anything.”

“Presume? Indeed, you had better not presume such foolish things! If you think I’ll let you get away with calling me something as silly as a ‘close acquaintance’ then you’re very mistaken. I don’t go about kissing close acquaintances—and full on the lips!” Bilbo let out a high-pitched huff. “What do you take me for?”

“A hobbit.”

“What kind of hobbit is the question I’m asking here, Master Dwarf.” Bilbo wagged a finger at Thorin, who looked like he very badly wanted to roll his eyes at him. “Don’t play the fool.”

“I would never,” came the reply. “That is the boys’ area.”

Bilbo laughed, one hand rising to rub at his chest on reflex despite the absence of any pain. The mithril had felt cold at first, after he had just woken up, but now his blood had warmed it. His fingers were beginning to memorise its curves as well, and soon he would grow familiar enough with it to stop wondering why his chest felt so odd. Still, he missed his gold clock.

Thorin stood up and went to light a fire in the fireplace. The room wasn’t that chilly so Bilbo guessed the dwarf just needed to busy himself with something, so he let him. Bilbo appreciated the chance to think unobserved too. He ran his fingertips over his new clock again, the motion more thoughtful than anything this time. When Thorin sat back down, orange flames flickering in the hearth, Bilbo gestured at his chest.

“Do you think I could have the old one?”

“It’s yours to take,” said Thorin, averting his eyes. “I took the liberty of cleaning it. It’s a lovely clock.”

“It is. My grandfather on my mother’s side made it for my family to celebrate his one-hundredth birthday. He was a great hobbit with a lot of inventive,” said Bilbo, a wistful smile etching itself onto his face. “Ma took after him.”

“She must have been a great hobbit herself.”

“Oh, yes.” Bilbo chuckled. “Definitely.”

This was nice—sitting around and talking about anything that came to mind was something he had done only with his parents, and sometimes with Gandalf. Now that he thought about it, he realised that he had first began having this sort of talks with the dwarves aboard the _Ered Luin_ : his bunkmates, the captain and her sons, those who sat with him during the meals. People who either didn’t know or didn’t care about his condition.

He wondered if Bofur would still be so friendly if he were to find out about his clock-heart, if Dori would still encourage his younger brothers to spend time with him in an attempt to keep them out of trouble, if Glóin would tell him about his wife and son. He liked to think they would. What was the mechanism in his chest, after all, but a fraction of him? Surely to judge him as if that were the total amount of his person wouldn’t be something that dwarves would do. Their rough lifestyles meant that they were used to prostheses, so even if the one he had was a bit uncommon, it shouldn’t raise as many eyebrows as it did in the Shire.

The Shire. Home—or was it? Bilbo wanted to go back. Lobelia’s words were tucked away in his rucksack, and he felt a tingle of pleasure zing up his spine whenever he recalled them. If she wanted him to go back, then he saw no reason to think the rest of Hobbiton wouldn’t, either. She was the one who gave him most grief about his clock, always nagging at him about it and how unnatural it was, how he should really consider seeing a doctor instead of reading all those books on clocks and mechanisms, and was his clock supposed to tick quite so loud?

In retrospect, now he understood Lobelia had said those things out of concern, but her tongue was always sharp, both for sweet and bitter words, and so conversing with her had more often than not left him feeling freakish and exhausted. He would have to talk about it with her when he returned—because he would return.

Bilbo remembered having this same conversation with himself not that long ago. He didn’t want to have it again. He feared that, if he did, his conviction would waver.

He had to return. There was no question about that. The Shire was home; the Lonely Mountain was not. It was that simple. Of course that he saw the appeal in staying, but if he closed his eyes and thought of his place in the world, it was in a comfortable smial under a green hill.

But he would miss Thorin.

And the boys, of course; they had grown on him. So had the captain. He supposed that he could drop by now and then, hitch a ride in the airship and pay Thorin a visit. Stay in the mountain for a while. Maybe spend the winter. They didn’t get enough snow in the Shire. He was sure it would be different so far up north.

His thoughts returning to the aircraft, all of a sudden he realised that he had no clue when the _Ered Luin_ would be making the journey back. He wondered if he would have to find another means of going to the West. He hoped not. Now that he had a clock-heart that wasn’t under risk of stuttering to a stop, he thought that he would enjoy the travel a lot more. Look out the huge windows as he had wanted to do before, and marvel at how different the world looked from so far up. Not that he would be any less marvelled if he travelled on foot, but watching from above was what appealed to him from the very beginning.

“I should ask the captain when her ship will be stopping in Dale,” he finally said, his voice making Thorin sit up straighter in his armchair. “I wouldn’t want to miss it.”

The dwarf said nothing for a moment, then told him, “It shouldn’t be that long. The _Ered Luin_ never stays longer than a month in the Iron Hills, and that time is almost up. In any case, the crew will send a telegram here to let Dís know when they’ll be arriving.”

“Oh! Well, that’s”— _sooner than expected_ —”a relief. That we’ll know, of course, not that I’ll be leaving within a week or so. I would have liked to stay longer.”

He said the words before he could think to smother them. When it finally registered, he looked down at his toes and prayed to all the gods that Thorin wouldn’t suggest to him the idea of staying. He didn’t know if he would have it in him to say no, even if he knew that was what he was supposed to do.

Of course his prayer went unheard and Thorin did exactly that, his voice soft around the words as he uttered them, as if he feared—or already knew—what Bilbo’s reply would be. It was hard, like he had predicted. The last thing he wanted was to rebuke Thorin, and the more he thought about it, the less reason he saw in doing so. He liked Thorin, and Thorin liked him back. They had shared a kiss, as quaint as it may sound, and many tender moments. Why should he renounce the purest affection he had ever known outside of his father and mother?

He could make neither heads nor tails of it, yet something persisted in his mind that he should head back, go home, be with his own people. But his own people had never made him feel welcome, so up to what point were they his and he was theirs? He felt welcome amongst dwarves, amongst the family of clockmakers, in a way that he never had amongst hobbits.

Bilbo wondered if he really should renounce that out of a wish to live in his parents’ home, to walk amongst verdant hills. His new clock might let him have a life closer to the one he should have had from the beginning. Without the ticking, other hobbits would be less inclined to glance at him with squinted eyes and lean close to mutter about him. Yet he doubted that he would ever be regarded as any common neighbour.

Thorin and his family didn’t ignore his clock-heart, but they didn’t make an issue out of it. To them, he was like any other person: Flawed but whole. He may need a little more special care than others, but others may need more special cares than him. Everyone had something to deal with, and _Erebor_ ’s dwarves understood that in a way that most people never did.

Letting out a slow breath, he thought about Thorin’s suggestion again. Stay in Erebor. Come home, Lobelia’s demand turned into a plea in his head. He rubbed his brow. The crackling flames of the fireplace suddenly seemed too hot for the comfort of his eyes and skin.

“I’ll think about it,” he said at last.

That was all he could offer at the moment.

* * *

“You’re leaving?” Kíli frowned. “With us?”

“Yes. Unless you would rather I left on my own?”

“No! The roads are dangerous; especially so for a solitary hobbit.”

“Then I’m leaving with you.”

“Yes, indeed, but…”

“We had thought you might stay,” said Fíli.

They were sitting just outside the hidden entrance to the mountain, watching the sun go down and separating tiny silver cogs from tiny iron cogs. Fíli and Kíli we going at a considerably faster speed than Bilbo, but his untrained eye was having a hard time telling at first glance which cog was what.

He rolled one over his palm, watching its cold glimmer, and tossed it into the iron pile. Not a second after, Kíli plucked it out and tossed it into the silver pile. Bilbo sighed and sat back, resting against a rock outcropping.

“I might,” he admitted. “I’m considering all alternatives.”

“Uncle would welcome you if you decided to stay,” said Kíli, not pausing on sorting out the cogs. “He’s grown fond of you. He doesn’t show it much, but we can tell.”

Bilbo wanted to say that he could tell too, but deemed it too bold a statement. They would probably ask how he could tell, and he would probably blush, and they would probably reach wrong and extravagant conclusions. He picked up a cog and twirled it.

After being allowed to move about, he had searched for Captain Dís. She had heard him talk, then blabber, about his many worries regarding what he should or shouldn’t do. Then she had patted his shoulder and told him her crew had sent a telegram while Bilbo rested in his room: The _Ered Luin_ would be arriving in less than a day.

That had sent Bilbo into a near-panic. He had hoped to have a little longer to make his decision, but it seemed that he was out of time. Now he was puttering about and trying to act like everything was fine and he was not having a crisis.

He didn’t like making rushed choices—they usually led nowhere good. But hadn’t he, a mouse of a voice said in his mind, decided to travel into the East in an instant? And it had turned out rather well so far. In fact, it might turn out sour due to his making a poor decision at the very last moment of his journey. How very complex and unfair, to have everything go awry due to one detail.

Tossing the cog into the iron pile—neither Kíli nor Fíli plucked it out this time—he stood up and dusted his clothes. It was near dinnertime and he planned to make what might be his last dinner in _Erebor_ noteworthy.

“I’m going back inside,” he told the boys. “Are you staying?”

“For a little while,” said Kíli, looking crestfallen that his previous remark hadn’t received a reply from the hobbit. Then he brightened up. “Are you cooking tonight?”

“I plan to. We’ll see if the captain lets me.”

“Oh, she’s a worrier.” Kíli grinned, giving Fíli a knowing look. “Not unlike someone else.”

Fíli chucked a cog at his brother’s head. It caught Kíli between the eyes, who let out an indignant yowl, and then went rolling over the edge and tinkling down the mountainside.

“I’m not getting it!”

Ignoring Kíli, Fíli said, “Mum might relent if you let her help you.”

“I don’t like cooking with others.”

“Just make her chop a carrot or watch the water until it boils.” Fíli shrugged and tossed a cog into the air, catching it when it fell back down. “It will appease her.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Bilbo sniffed. “Be in time for dinner!”

“We will!”

With that, he marched inside. Some other day, he would have stayed to watch the sun set and night begin, but whether he left or stayed, every minute counted. In both cases he would be saying goodbye to someone he loved, and he had never been good at that.

After dinner—a somewhat gloomy if delicious affair since, Bilbo’s indecision on what to do aside, Thorin and his family would be parted again—they all went to one of the old terraces and smoked what was left of Dís’ exotic pipe-weed.

For the sake of breaking traditions, Bilbo wanted to walk Thorin to his room once they decided to retire for the night. It took some convincing, but the dwarf relented, then laughed as Bilbo wished him a goodnight and suddenly realised he had no idea where his own room was. Thus Thorin guided him back.

“You will have to teach me how to navigate these hallways,” Bilbo said.

“ _Erebor_ is a big place. It might take some time,” Thorin replied, and it sounded almost like a warning—the sort that a person gives when they’re trying to shield someone as much as themselves from harm.

Bilbo didn’t reply. He thought of his rucksack in his room, unpacked, and wondered if he might have made his choice without noticing. It would be a relief, finally knowing what the future had in store for him, but the tense feeling in his chest still didn’t leave. It sat there, heavier than his clock, and wreaked havoc with his inner peace.

They said goodnight at Bilbo’s door and he slipped inside. He considered inviting Thorin in for a moment, then thought better of it. While sitting by the fireplace to chat with the dwarf would have been the best way to finish what could be his last night in the Lonely Mountain, he still had to decide what he would do. With Thorin there, it would be harder to make an objective analysis of the situation. And so that night Bilbo sat down alone and talked to no one but himself.

* * *

Morning came with an eerie quietness that Bilbo wasn’t sure he liked. Fíli and Kíli didn’t talk much during breakfast, pushing their food around their plates as they muttered about what seemed to be like a list of things they would have to do once they got aboard the _Ered Luin_. It wasn’t the duties that made them so despondent, but rather the fact that they were leaving a place they considered theirs in the most personal sense of the word.

Bilbo hadn’t been told directly, but he had come to learn from hints and comments that while there could only be one clockmaker at a time in _Erebor_ —tradition, he supposed—Fíli and Kíli had spent just as much time in it as they had in their mother’s airship. To them, it was a second home, and leaving it behind caused them no joy.

“We’ll come back soon,” Bilbo heard Fíli mutter. When Kíli only gave a half-hearted shrug, he said again, this time more assertive, “We’ll come back soon.”

Back in his room, Bilbo started pushing things into his pack with some reluctance. He was beginning the journey back to the Shire. He should be glad, but instead he just felt like he was wearing his clothes backward. Giving up on packing for the time being, he sat down on the bed.

There was a glint at the periphery of his vision, and he found that it came from the silvery flask that Thorin had given him. It was resting on his bedside table; he picked it up and ran a finger pad over its pattern. Still lovely. He wondered if Thorin had drawn it. The dwarf decorated his creations, after all, so why not a small flask?

Bilbo put it into the box Fíli and Kíli had given him—along with the belt he had never worn in the end—and laid it by the rucksack. His mind rebelled at the idea of shoving it in along with the rest of his things.

A knock on the door made him turn. It was Thorin, with those funny goggle-marks around his eyes and a bundle under his arm. Bilbo waved him in and the dwarf stepped into the room with a little less shyness than he had the last time. He hitched his shoulder, making what he was holding move up and down.

“For you.”

“Oh, dear.” Bilbo smiled, accepting the bundle. “A gift?”

“I’m not sure if you can be gifted something that you already own.”

The cloth fell away. A gold clock stared up at Bilbo, its hands unmoving. He covered his mouth, but a short sound escaped him all the same. He couldn’t tell if it was a shocked sound, a melancholic sound, or a horrified sound—but he did know that he was feeling all of that at once.

It was his clock, half of his heart, and it lay silent as death on his lap. He remembered his parents winding it for him when he was a child, his mother explaining that his ticking was part of his thumping, his cousin asked if he could see the cuckoo bird. He remembered shutting the tiny doors to his clock-heart and taking to wearing a cravat on all occasions to keep it from sight.

His hand fell from his mouth to his neck. No cravat.

“Bilbo? Is something wrong?” Thorin knelt down, his expression furrowed. “I made sure to clean and buff it… Please tell me if I did something you dislike.”

“It’s all right,” Bilbo murmured. He smiled at the dwarf. “It is very much all right, actually. I simply had forgotten about it and seeing it again took me by surprise. Getting to hold it in my hands is just so strange! I thought I would be buried with it.”

Thorin made a low sound which may have been his showing agreement or not knowing what to say, but Bilbo didn’t pay it much attention. His eyes were back on his old clock. He curled his fingers around it and lifted it, both amazed and appalled. It was too bizarre. The clock was so small and cold and light in his grasp. He wondered if he was dreaming; for surely what had once been the only thing keeping him alive couldn’t be such a mundane thing despite its gorgeous craftsmanship.

He set it back down on his lap and made Thorin hand him an old and quite familiar box. He opened it and took out the gold key, its leaved pattern matching the cuckoo clock’s vine. Then he bundled it all back up in the cloth and rested his hands atop it.

“I forgot to ask,” Bilbo said, “if the mithril clock comes with a key as well. For winding, you know?”

Thorin smiled and shook his head. “No need for that. It uses your blood to work.”

His stomach dropped. “Pardon?”

“Not your actual blood,” Thorin hastened to clarify. “Your blood is perfectly safe. What the clock uses as its power source is your blood flow. Like a water mill that uses the currents of a river.”

“Oh.” Bilbo rested a hand on his chest, trying to calm down his rapidly-beating heart. “The way you worded it at first was a bit… disturbing, if I’m honest.”

“I apologise.”

“It’s fine.” He held out the bundle. “Will you look after it for me?”

Had Thorin been standing, he would have taken a step back. As it was, he settled for giving Bilbo a confused look that bordered on scandalised. It was quite amusing, in fact, and Bilbo would have laughed if he hadn’t wanted to ruin the moment.

“You want me to keep it?”

“Well, I’m offering it. What does that tell you?”

“Bilbo…” Thorin shook his head. “I can’t accept it.”

“Why ever not?”

“It’s yours.”

“So it’s mine to give.” Bilbo nodded at the bundle. “If you want it, it’s yours. I only ask that you will take good care of it.”

Thorin hesitated, and then, ever so slowly, he accepted the clock along with its key. Their hands touched as he took back the bundle, and Bilbo smiled brightly at him. The cuckoo clock may not be a part of his heart any more, but Bilbo would always be fond of it. He trusted Thorin to take better care of it than he ever would—keep it in working order and buffed to a shine.

“Something to remember you by?” asked Thorin.

“You could say as much.” Bilbo cupped his cheek. “Until I come back, at least.”

“I didn’t think you’d come back.”

“Neither did I, but the boys made me realise I can have two homes.”

“You can have as many as you want,” said Thorin, “and I would share all of them with you.”

“Then you’ll have to visit the Shire sometime.”

“I would be honoured to see your hometown someday,” agreed Thorin. “And be invited into the Bag’s End.”

That made him laugh. “Bag End.”

“As you say.”

“It’s settled, then,” Bilbo said, feeling the knot in his chest loosen somewhat, though he knew it would tighten back up when the time to say farewell came. “Now, I think we mentioned the other night that you and I had some unfinished business.”

Thorin’s smile wasn’t weak, but it wasn’t strong either. “I remember something along those lines.”

“Should we finish it, then?”

Thorin rose from his knees and set the bundle on the bed, next to the rucksack. His breath caressed Bilbo’s cheeks as he leant in. “With pleasure.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that's it! thanks to everyone who read and showed their love for my first fic by leaving a comment or kudos, or bookmarking it, or drawing fanart, or contacting me on tumblr! it really helped me stay motivated and even though I was still a snail in updating, what matters is that I actually finished the story! this is a great deal for me.
> 
> many thanks to those who helped with editing ([DestinysWindow](archiveofourown.org/users/DestinysWindow) [lily_winterwood](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Lily_Winterwood)). this story would be even more of a mess if not for them.
> 
> rock on, y'all. thank you for sharing in this adventure!
> 
> PS: I moved over to **erbor** both on AO3 and tumblr--you're welcome to follow me, if you feel like it!


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